JEFFERSONl 

HIS LlFt:X<J PERSGTOty 



•S?/ MOKRIS SGHAFF'!'S' 






^Md 



a^l 






"Mm 






\m 



wm 



hm 



Pfi^k^ 






^f 



^ci^A^v. 









■pm 






m:J 




Class _ 
Book^ 



,il.4-GT 



. i 



B*fe^3 



CojpgM'N?.- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 



BY 

MORRIS ^CHAFF 

AUTHOR OF 
THE SPIRIT OF OLD WEST POINT, THE BATTLE 
OF THE WILDERNESS, THE SUNSET 
OF THE CONFEDERACY 




BOSTON 
JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY 



^■'4 



.I).^!© S3 



Copyright, 192S 
By Moekib Schaff 



THE MURRAY PRINTINa COMPANT 
CAMBBIDQE, MASfl. 



NOV 27*?? 

C1A(;90386 



To My Friends 

General Elbert Wheeler, Nashua, New Hampshire 

Thomas Allen, Esquire, Boston, Massachusetts 

Mrs. Mary Dearing Christian, Lynchburg, Virginia 

Arthur Lord, Esquire, Plymouth, Massachusetts 

and last, but not least, 

Honorable Henry St. George Tucker, Lexington, Virginia 

this book is dedicated 
as a token of attachment and esteem. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I 1 

Chapter II 17 

Chapter III 29 

Chapter IV 42 

Chapter V 48 

Chapter VI 61 

Chapter VII 68 

Chapter VIII 79 

Chapter IX 86 

Chapter X 93 

Chapter XI 99 

Chapter XII ... 107 

Chapter XIII 120 

Chapter XIV 125 

Chapter XV 131 

Chapter XVI 144 

Chapter XVII 159 

Chapter XVIII 166 

Chapter XIX 185 

Chapter XX 197 

Chapter XXI 205 

Chapter XXII 217 

Chapter XXIII 229 

Chapter XXIV 271 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 

CHAPTER I 

There are two reasons for undertaking to write 
this book. The first and main one is this: a longing 
to see justice done, so far as my pen may prevail, 
to Jefferson Davis, President of the ill-starred South- 
ern Confederacy, who, I feel and believe, has had 
unfair treatment by the historians of the great war 
between the States, known as the Southern Rebellion, 
and against whose armies I fought on many fields, 
including the bloody ones of Chancellorsville, the 
Wilderness and Spotsylvania. So then, it is not 
through sympathy with the cause he was at the 
head of that I take up my pen; no, no, but at the 
entreaty of two mighty advocates. Truth and Fair 
Play. I am cheered on, furthermore, in my under- 
taking by one of the handsomest, the noblest of our 
country's virtues. Magnanimity, proclaiming that, 
out of hatred and revenge to perpetuate a false and 
unjust portrait of the leader of the Confederacy, 
the sons and grandsons of whose gallant defenders 
helped so bravely to carry their united country's 

1 



2 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

flag to victory on the fields of France, is unworthy 
and out of keeping with a great-hearted people. 

Moreover, Jefferson Davis, beside being leader in 
the most unparalleled struggle of modern times — a 
struggle commemorated by monuments, ceremonial, 
and poetry that deck the green slopes of that height 
called History — was in manner and reality, in 
private and public life, the finest product of a democ- 
racy; namely, a gentleman. The world has had many 
types of the hero, statesman and philosopher, but 
only one in its conception of the gentleman. Again, 
his mind was not only stored with political, scientific, 
and historic knowledge but ornamented also with 
the ripened fruits and beauties of Hterature; and 
his heart, the mind's working companion, was 
naturally bold and had not onl}'- stood the dangers 
of the battlefield but was strung also with the 
finest chords of sweet tenderness. 

The second reason is the silent, personal pleasure 
that will attend the use of my pen in such a cause; 
not arguing or contending, but talking as it were 
to an open-minded reader who, I hope, on taking 
up this book, is blessed with a fight heart; but 
should he be so unfortunate as to be harassed by 
cares and sorrows will, while reading it, forget them 
all and find his pillow sweet. 

We learn, from a mere fragment of an autobiog- 
raphy dictated a few years before Jefferson Davis' 
death, that he was born on June 3, 1808, at Fair- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 3 

view, Todd County, Kentucky, and that his ances- 
tors, on his father's side, were "^Ish Baptists who 
one May morning, 1701, in a company of twenty of 
like faith "after bidding farewell to their home and 
brethren" — so says an old Delaware church record 
— sailed from Milf ord Haven, South Wales, on the 
ship James and Mary and landed in Philadelphia 
on the eighth of the following September. 

Once at the end of their long voyage they made 
their way — and no doubt with glad hearts — to a 
settlement of fellow churchmen in Delaware, and 
cast their lot with them. In 1735, the Delaware 
Colony swarmed and settled on the Peedee River, 
South Carolina, at a place afterward known as the 
Welsh Neck Baptist Church. About 1754 or 1755, 
Evan Davis, an old bachelor, the son of John, one 
of the three brothers of the original company 
from Wales, drifted down to the Peedee and there 
married a widow Williams, whose maiden name 
was Emory, with two children, boys; and in 1756, 
Samuel, Jefferson Davis' father, was born. 

Before the Revolutionary War broke out the 
family had moved to near Augusta, Georgia, and 
the head of it, Evan Davis, had died. While the 
war was going on his widow sent Samuel with sup- 
plies to his two half brothers who were in the field, 
and, boy like, yielding to the spirit of adventure, 
fondness and pride in their gallantry, he stayed 
with them. Later and notwithstanding his youth. 



4 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

he was made captain of a company and led it to 
the defense of Savannah when attacked by the 
British. 

After the war was over, the young Captain was 
elected Clerk of the Courts and then fell in love 
with and married Jane Cook, the mother of Jefferson 
Davis. She was the daughter of a famously eloquent 
Scotch-Irish Baptist preacher, and Mr. Davis in his 
fragmentary autobiography says in loving terms 
that she had a poetic nature, the source perchance 
of many a charm which graces the speeches and 
addresses of her distinguished son. 

Here then in Jefferson Davis' veins we have a 
mingling of Welsh and Scotch blood carrying the 
roots and seeds of their racial virtues and character- 
istics, chief of which has ever been a grim tenacity 
of convictions and a prompt readiness to risk all, 
and if need be to lose all in their defense. Davis' 
blood fairly teemed with this ancestral character- 
istic and we are quite sure he would have been spared 
many a trial, many a poignant hour if, when his 
wounds were bleeding on the field of Buena Vista 
in the Mexican War, the veins that carried a possible 
excess of this too defiant blood had been somewhat 
more completely emptied. 

But let all this be as it may, the voice of Ken- 
tucky, with its ever wild fascination for the frontiers- 
man, was heard in Georgia by the young Captain 
and his wife Jane, and about 1790, with their rapidly 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 5 

increasing family, they started through the wilder- 
ness for Tennessee, for the famous Blue Grass region; 
and there Jefferson, the last of the ten boys and 
girls, was born on June 3, 1808. 

In a cabin within forty miles of his birthplace, 
eight months and nine days later, February 12, 
1809, Abraham Lincoln was born; and we think 
even the stars must have wondered over the con- 
trasting fate of these two children asleep in their 
cradles: one of them named in honor of the living 
President, Thomas Jefferson, whose views on the 
rights of the States determined his namesake's 
career; the other in honor of the patriarch Abraham, 
revered by Jews, Christians and Mohammedans 
the world over and whose namesake is likewise 
revered throughout the civilized world and more 
and more tenderly loved from generation to genera- 
tion by his fellow countrymen. Was there a far- 
seeing genius that presided over the naming of 
these children? 

A Baptist church stands now on the spot where 
Jefferson Davis was born, and when it was dedicated, 
long after the war and old age had whitened his hair, 
its builders begged him to come back and join in 
the services, and, with a pensive gladness, he 
complied with their request. 

When he was four or five years old his father 
sold his tobacco raising and thorough-bred horse 
breeding plantation and struck off again into the 



6 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

wilderness, this time for the Bayou Teche country 
in Louisiana. But the swampy cUmate proved so 
bad that he soon sold out and bought a large tract 
in Wilkenson County, Mississippi, building his 
house on a knoll where the health-giving breezes 
from the neighboring yellow pine forests blew softly 
over it. 

When the future President of the Southern Con- 
federacy was seven years old, one of his father's 
friends. Major Hinds, who had fought in the battle 
of New Orleans under Jackson, made a trip back to 
his old home in Kentucky and Mr. Davis asked him 
to take Jefferson with him to a school for boys 
known as St. Thomas College, kept by Dominican 
Fathers in Washington County, Kentucky. Mr. 
Davis took this step without his wife's consent or 
knowledge, because, perchance, he well knew she 
would be unwilling to part with the baby, as it were, 
of her large family. 

The Major's party, with negro servants and suit- 
able camp outfit, consisted of his wife, his sister and 
his son Howell, about Jefferson's age. All were 
mounted — the boys on ponies. Here let me say — 
and with a feeling of pensiveness, that in view of the 
happiness with which these boys enjoyed their 
ponies and the camp fires, I cannot for the moment 
throw off — that Jefferson's Uttle companion on this 
ride became a soldier in the Confederate army and 
was killed soon after the war was over while trying to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 7 

separate two of his friends engaged in a pistol duel 
in Greenville, Mississippi. 

The trail the Major followed wound through the 
wide, shadow-flecked wilderness of the Choctah and 
Cherokee Nations, and when at last he reached Nash- 
ville, Tennessee, he at once led his party to the door 
of his old commander, Jackson, who welcomed him 
and his charge with such heartiness that they stayed 
there for several weeks. 

Jefferson Davis never forgot that visit to the 
Hermitage with its grove of towering primeval 
trees and vast estate of grain and pastm-e fields, 
and to his old age cherished the remembrance of 
Mrs. Jackson's charms and the mingled dignity and 
simplicity of her heroic and famous husband. 

The lad's journey ended at the gateway of the 
monks who, besides the school, had a large landed 
property, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, flour mills 
and slaves; a very consistent and workable combi- 
nation of the spiritual and the worldly. 

As might be assumed, nearly all of the pupils 
were Catholics, but to the monks' credit, they did 
not tiy to make a proselyte of their new pupil and 
in later days, not alone when fame rested on him but 
at the time of his great trials, spoke well of him and 
were his warm friends to the end. 

He was the youngest in the school and slept on a 
cot in a room with one of the priests. One night, as 
soon as the candle was blown out, the older boys 



8 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

who had a grudge against the priest, bombarded the 
room with cabbages, tmriips and other Uke vege- 
tables. On the immediate investigation of the riot, 
the indignant authorities asked Uttle Jeff if he knew 
who were the leaders and actors in the affront; he 
said he did, but refused to tell on them. Whereupon 
one of the tonsured Fathers strapped him down to 
receive the usual punishment, but before delivering a 
blow asked him if he was ready to give the names of 
the culprits. He replied, ''No," but he was willing, 
however, to disclose one fact; he knew who blew 
out the candle, the signal for the vegetable-equipped 
firing party. On being asked who it was, he responded 
that he had done it. His answer was so unexpect- 
edly frank and he was so little that the monk 
unstrapped him, and let him off with a serious 
lecture. 

At the end of the second year, and President 
Davis intimates at the insistence of his mother, he 
was sent home, escorted thither on a steamboat 
down the Ohio and Mississippi by a young law stu- 
dent at Transylvania. His brother Isaac met him at 
the landing, and, to surprise their mother, it was 
mischievously planned between them that little 
Jeff should go ahead and ask her if she had seen 
any stray horses about the place. He found her 
sitting at the door and boldly putting the question, 
she turned and clasped him in her arms saying, 
*'No, but I have got my stray boy." He then ran 



HIS LIFE AND PERSOiN.. 

out to his father in the fields who to his wonder, . 
his father was habitually undemonstrative in his 
affection, embraced and kissed him. 

He attended neighborhood and select schools till 
he was sixteen and then entered the sophomore 
class of Transylvania University at Lexington, 
Kentucky. That mysterious spirit, which in old age 
we call fate but in boyhood our good angel, must 
have directed his footsteps back to those college 
grounds of his native State, for surely he could not 
have been thrown in with a student body endowed 
with more natural ability or animated, as time 
proved, with more latent ambition; for six of his 
fellow collegians, some from the North and some 
from the South, were members of the United States 
Senate at the same time with him. Now, in the eye 
of every instinctively high-minded youth on enter- 
ing a student body. Nature in her friendly and wise 
provisions, plants an ideal of what constitutes manli- 
ness and honor adorned by intellectual strength. 
In some of the classes above him he soon discovers 
the embodiment of that ideal and considers it one 
of the happiest days of his life when he can call him 
a friend. Hail, all hail! ''Nick" Bowen, Jones, 
W. G., who fell at Chickamauga and Ramseur at 
Cedar Creek in the valley, you filled my West 
Point boyhood's ideals, and your manly faces are 
still blooming as in your youth for me. The one in 
that brilHant group at Transylvania who filled this 



% 



r- 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 

-acal when Davis matriculated was Albert Sidney 
Johnston, large in frame, erect, of open countenance 
and clothed in natural dignity. 

Johnston preceded Davis to West Point, main- 
taining among the cadets drawn from the high life 
of all sections of the country the same preeminence 
for character and ability as at Transylvania . It is 
well known, it is a matter of history, that Davis 
appointed Johnston second on the list of general 
officers for the Confederate armies, and that he fell 
at Shiloh just on the verge of gaining what prom- 
ised to be an overwhelming victory. His untimely 
death was the heaviest blow in the mind of Mr. 
Davis and that of others which the Confederacy 
ever met, and Davis never spoke of him and that 
battle in his old age without eyes filled with the dew 
of tenderness. 

Just after passing his examination for the senior 
class, and with honors, Davis' father died on July 4, 
two years to a day before the death of ex-President 
Jefferson, in honor of whom he had named his boy. 
Shortly afterward, Davis' oldest brother, Joseph 
Emory, who from that time on was like a second 
father, secured for him from President Monroe an 
appointment as Cadet to West Point; and in 
September, 1824, he entered that famous institV 
tion which through its incarnated traditions and 
mighty over-arching spirit had much to do, as we 
believe, indeed we know, in developing certain inher- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 11 

ent qualities, some playing a conspicuously favorable 
and some an equally conspicuously unfavorable part 
in his eventful life. 

In the class two years ahead of him was his friend, 
Albert Sidney Johnston; in the next class above, 
Leonidas Polk, afterwards Bishop of Louisiana, who, 
on the breaking out of the war, laid off his vestments 
and was commissioned by President Davis a general 
officer in the Confederate Army and, like Johnston, 
met death on the field of battle. He and Sidney 
Johnston were Jefferson Davis' closest friends at 
West Point, a relation of joy and tenderness, con- 
fidences and affection which every graduate will 
duly remember, for it blossoms on to old age in the 
memory of every one of them. 

From Virginia, in the Corps above Davis were 
Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, little dreaming 
what the future had in store for them in connection 
with the tallish, spare, dignified but ever graciously 
polite Cadet in the second class below them. Yet, 
yet, the web was in the loom, the threads with their 
varying hues were on the spools, and the shuttle 
ready waiting till the guns would open on Sumter 
to weave the involved and many-hued designs of 
their fate. 

A. E. Church, son of the Chief Justice of Con- 
necticut, graduated at the head of Davis' class and 
in my day at West Point, 1858, was professor of 
mathematics, and the only time I ever saw Jefferson 



12 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis, he was walking at the close of a golden Sep- 
tember day between him and Professor Bartletl 
under the bending elms that line the plain. We hac 
just passed them when my companion, a Southerr 
Cadet, observed, 'Hhat is Jeff Davis." I turned anc 
recall with distinctness his graceful figure and dis- 
tinguished bearing. He was arrayed in a dark blue 
serge and wore a soft, light-colored, low-crowned 
gracefully brimmed hat. I have always been sorry 
my Southern classmate did not tell me who he was 
before we had met and passed them, for my mem- 
ory, I am sure, would have carried away the look ir 
his face. 

He graduated July 12, 1828, standing twenty- 
third in a class of thirty-three members. And now 
let me dwell for a moment on his four years of edu 
cation at West Point, and make clear if I can mj 
convictions as to how advantageous and disadvan 
tageous it proved to be as that beaming caree: 
mounted and unfolded. 

In his day and for many years afterwards, ai 
soon as a Cadet entered West Point, its spiri 
began to prepare the ground of his nature, not ai 
for an athlete or football player, but to bear th( 
fruits of the educated soldier and gentleman. T( 
this end and in keeping with its traditions inheritee 
from its Revolutionary founders, it held before hin 
day in and day out, good manners, honor, simplicity 
courage and love of truth as the virtues that, ii 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 13 

connection with the ornaments of a cultivated mind, 
should adorn his life. 

To consummate this high purpose the Academy 
as a seat of learning was especially fortunate in its 
student body; for in those days, as from the very 
beginning, only the sons of famihes of social dis- 
tinction, as a rule, received appointments. The 
inevitable result was that the air of an aristocracy 
more or less pervaded West Point, infusing the 
bearing of every graduate, albeit unconsciously to 
him, with some of its innate cast of exclusiveness. 

While this combination of family distinction, 
culture and a life position as an officer of the Army 
with its attendant, possibiUties of mihtary glory gave 
the graduate a ready entrance to the best society, 
yet it had one very weighty drawback, it cut him 
off from the great body of the people who, conscious 
of equal abilities but less fortunate and more or less 
doomed to toil, very naturally, for such is our 
nature, withheld its friendliness, meeting his assured 
advances with a cold eye. This was especially true 
of the demeanor of the descendants of the Puritans; 
who, very proud at heart and blessed with many, 
many fine qualities, yet sparingly so of the spirit 
of good fellowship, to this very day are keenly 
resentful to any asserted social and political 
preeminence. 

Now such was the inborn nature of JefTerson 
Davis that while all the virtues of West Point 



14 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

education, honor, frankness, truthfulness and good 
manners found a native soil to grow in, still in it 
too were already germinated seeds of a certain 
reserve and dignity that found the air congenial 
and had flourished by the time he graduated into a 
distinctively aristocratic bearing that clung to him 
to the end; and much, very much, as all the world 
knows to his serious disadvantage in his presidential 
life. 

So then, the result of his four years at West 
Point, instead of inculcating the pliancy and assumed 
cordiality of the politician, was to develop a person- 
ality of the reverse order. But, heavy as was this 
handicap, the powers and duties attending the 
Presidency of the Confederacy imposed a far heavier 
one upon him; in this that from the earliest days of 
the Academy there has been in the minds of the 
militia and volunteers, South and North, an unfav- 
orable prepossession of its graduates; that they not 
only held themselves above and aloof from them, 
but, what was more galUng, gave their fellow grad- 
uates in time of war the precedence over them no 
matter how well or bravely they had met their 
duties. 

And as to this umbrage and unjust accusation I 
do protest. For this is a fact, let it weigh what it 
will; in my long life many a fellow West Point 
graduate has opened his heart to me around camp- 
fires in the field and before blazing hearths with 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 15 

their evoking unreserve, and not a word or even a 
hint ever fell from the lips of one of them to justify 
such a charge. 

But let this be as it may, no sooner had the war 
begun and Jefferson Davis had to make appoint- 
ments for its armies than many of the officers of 
volunteers and militia, but chiefly ambitious poli- 
ticians hungering for military honors, whom he had 
refused to appoint to high places as leaders of troops, 
at once became his bitter, malicious enemies, declaim- 
ing that, as usual, like all West Pointers, he had 
favored his fellow graduates. And thus was bred a 
virulent faction; a faction whose poison soon mingled 
in the editorial pages of leading newspapers, under- 
mining the President's influence and, as it persisted 
throughout the war, weakening like a deep-seated 
carbuncle the body of the Confederacy itself. 

But, however intense and personal was this 
hostility, not even his most relentless enemy ever 
alleged that in deed or act, in sunshine or shadow, 
Jefferson Davis violated a single one of the great 
virtues which West Point had helped to develop 
in his character; namely, honor, courage, fidelity to 
public and private trusts, purity of life, and the 
bearing and speech of a gentleman. And it can be 
said with all truth that his stern old Alma Mater 
had no son who walked her velvety green plain, 
who loved her more deeply or cherished more her 
ideals. When his voice was almost gone, and death 



16 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

waiting at the doorstep, from his pillow he whispered 
of her and his West Point bygone friends in loving 
terms, and we think the Spirit of Old West Point 
heard his whispering love and would have smoothed 
his brow if she could. 

We have dwelt, and perhaps too long, on some of 
the advantages and disadvantages of his West Point 
education; but not, we hope, without lighting a 
candle here and there in the mind of the reader, 
helping him to find his way, not necessarily to a 
favorable, but a fair judgment of Jefferson Davis 
as we go along with the narrative. 



CHAPTER II 

Upon graduation he was commissioned Second 
Lieutenant in the First Regular Infantry, and in 
September, 1828, at the expiration of the usual 
graduation leave, reported at Jefferson Barracks, 
St. Louis. 

Shortly afterward he was ordered to join his 
company at Fort Crawford, the present site of 
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, journeying thither on 
one of the triple-decked, stern-wheel steamboats, 
an imperial princess of navigation in those days, 
saluting grandly as they approached and departed 
from cities and towns with prolonged, reverberating, 
hoarse blasts, arousing in the breast of every pas- 
senger, however obscure, the momentarily pleasing 
sense of a vague importance. 

Fort Crawford at that time was one of the Army's 
extreme outposts on the frontier; but for a hundred 
years or more before its day on the same site had 
been a trading post of the fur gathering companies 
of Quebec. For at that point, near the mouth of the 
Wisconsin, one of their long, winding trails through 
the wilderness of lakes, forests, and beaver-homing 
streams crossed the Mississippi, thence bearing on 
over the wide ranges of buffalo and under soaring 

17 



18 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

eagles to the faraway upper Missouri. As I write 
these Hues, the native wildness of that historic trail 
steals back into this room and I wish, reader, that 
we could have travelled and camped with its care- 
free hunters and trappers. 

Around the fort and up and down the river were 
many Indians; Sacs and Foxes, Wyandots, Menomi- 
nees, Winnebagos and Pottawatomies, who, crowded 
back day in and day out from their hunting grounds 
and the graves of their people by equally fierce and 
unmerciful frontiersmen, were not in a friendly mood, 
and on several occasions when Davis was out with 
detachments to get timber for the completion of 
the fort, he and his men barely escaped massacre 
from bands on the warpath. 

But that first winter he had another and more 
pleasing experience, one that he enjoyed recalHng in 
his old age. With a sergeant, he was out on a recon- 
naissance and some forty miles from the fort when 
night overtook them. After wandering through the 
darkness hour after hour, to their joy they came 
across a cabin. On haihng, its occupant came to the 
door and asked, ''Who is there?" 

Davis recognized the voice and answered, ''Were 
you ever at Transylvania?" 

"Yes," responded the pioneer, "I was there 
from 1821 to 1825." 

"Do you remember a college boy named Jeff 
Davis?" 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 19 

''Of course I do." 

"Well, I am Jeff." 

"That was enough for me; I pulled him off his 
horse and into my cabin and it was hours before 
either of us would think of sleep," said George W. 
Jones, later United States Senator from Iowa, in a 
statement after Mr. Davis' death. 

The next spring with a small detachment he was 
sent up the Wisconsin to Yellow Creek, somewhat 
over a hundred miles from Crawford, to establish 
a sawmill for additional lumber. There he met the 
Indians again, but gaining their affection, he was 
formally made a chief of the tribe, and an old squaw 
a few years afterward, out of friendship and in remem- 
brance of him, notified an adjacent post of a con- 
templated attack. While on this lonely duty he 
was seized with such a debilitating illness that he had 
to be carried about and nursed like a child ; but, fortu- 
nately, he had with him James Pemberton, colored, 
a slave in law but on the footing with his master, 
whom he had played with as a boy, of a friend and 
glad companion — if ever there were two friends in 
this world that knew each other and loved each other, 
they were Jefferson Davis and James Pemberton. 

Just before the breaking out of the Black Hawk 
War, Davis rejoined his regiment at Fort Crawford, 
then commanded by Zachary Taylor, later President 
Taylor. Colonel Taylor had his family with him — 
three girls and a boy — and Jefferson Davis for his 



20 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

first wife, married the eldest, Sarah Knox Taylor, 
as will be told later. 

April, 1831, Davis accompanied the troops in the 
campaign against the Indians; their hne of march, 
made in early May, was up the pebbly-shored Rock 
River; the wild plums, honeysuckles and pawpaws 
in the thickets here and there along its sycamore- 
shadowed banks, and the flowers of the prairies that 
stretched away from them were in full bloom. 

Besides the Regulars under Taylor, there were 
militia organizations called out by the Governor of 
Illinois, a thousand or more men, and among them 
first as a private and later as a captain of one of 
these companies was Abraham Lincoln, who brought 
back from that campaign something that Davis' 
nature could not give lodgment or whose value 
as a foil he could not appreciate, namely, several 
additions to that famous granary of funny stories 
by which Lincoln avoided many a conflict with the 
politicians of his own party, who, no matter how 
angry on entering the White House, always went 
away amused and more highly attached to him 
than ever because of the clever way he had dodged 
their issue behind a funny story. 

The Indians were overwhelmingly defeated in 
August at the Battle of Bad Axe some twenty odd 
miles above Fort Crawford, and a few days later, 
their leader, Black Hawk, then an old man, his son 
and the Prophet, a tall, straight chief with a broad 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 21 

face, large, full eyes, abundant coarse black hair 
ornamented with an eagle feather and dressed in a 
suit of white deerskin, were taken prisoners by a 
treacherous band of Winnebagos and delivered up 
to the authorities at Fort Crawford. 

A moving account of the sufferings of the Indians 
in that last great battle of their race east of the 
Mississippi may be found in a letter from Mrs. 
Albert Sidney Johnston, whose husband was in the 
engagement, to a member of her family. In years 
gone by, more than once I lounged on what is known 
as Black Hawk's Tower at the junction of the Rock 
River with the Mississippi and pondered over their 
fate. That spot with its conmianding outlook had 
been the home of his tribe for generation after 
generation; his forefathers and favorite daughter 
were buried there, and in my day the rows of their 
cornfields were still traceable. The view is wide 
and you see the distant skyUne asleep in the bosom 
of the prairie. 

It was decided that Black Hawk, his son, and a 
number of others should be sent as prisoners of 
war to St. Louis and Davis was detailed by Colonel 
Taylor to conduct them thither. Black Hawk says 
in his autobiography dictated the following year: 
"Then started to Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis) 
in a steamboat (the Winnebago) under the charge 
of a young war chief, who treated us all with much 
kindness. He is a good and brave young chief with 



22 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

whose conduct I was much pleased. On our way 
down we called at Galena and remained a short 
time. The people crowded to the boat to see us; but 
the war chief would not permit them to enter the 
apartment where we were — knowing, from what 
his own feelings would have been if he had been 
placed in a similar situation, that we did not want 
a gaping crowd around us." Verily, Davis' con- 
sideration for the feelings of his captives speaks 
well for him. 

On their arrival at St. Louis a ball and chain 
were fastened on Black Hawk, and while there 
Washington Irvdng went to see him and wrote, " He 
is upwards of seventy years old, has a fine head, a 
Roman style of nose and prepossessing counte- 
nance." Later he was sent to Fort Monroe for con- 
finement, little dreaming that Jefferson Davis 
would follow in his steps to the same place and there 
also wear manacles, people craving to gape at him 
as at Black Hawk. But Black Hawk had almost 
the freedom of the Post with its widely encircling 
green ramparts, while Davis was closely guarded 
by double lines of sentinels in a semi-dark casemate, 
no one allowed to approach it, sentinels and blazing 
lights in the room throughout the night. 

Black Hawk was so kindly treated during his 
imprisonment that on parting with the command- 
ing officer. Colonel Eustis, he said, ''The memory 
of your friendship will remain till the Great Spirit 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 23 

says it is time for Black Hawk to sing his death 
song," and presented Colonel Eustis with a white 
deerskin hunting dress and some feathers of the 
white eagle. 

Jefferson Davis carried away no such feeling at 
the end of his two years' confinement, at least for 
his first keeper, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, and, in view 
of his treatment, it is no wonder; but to the end of 
his life he had the warmest gratitude for his last 
keeper. Colonel Burton. There is something striking 
to me, partaking of the mysterious, in these almost 
identical occurrences in the lives of Davis and 
Black Hawk. 

Upon the creation of the First Dragoons, winter 
of 1832, a regiment famous in the history of our 
Cavalry, Davis was selected for one of its officers 
and soon became its Adjutant. Its headquarters 
were at Fort Gibson and on one occasion, when it 
was about to set off for the Creek Nation, his 
Sergeant-Major who was sick in the hospital was 
forbidden by the Surgeon to go with the troops. 
He appealed to Davis, who on his death bed in New 
Orleans received the following letter from the old 
Sergeant (Davis died on December 6): 

"November 28, 1889. 
Honored Sir: 

Once when there was much sickness prevailing 
among the First Dragoons at Fort Gibson, and I was 



24 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

very sick in the hospital, the regiment was ordered 
for the benefit of its health to remove from the Cher- 
okee Nation; but the surgeon refused to allow me 
to be removed with the regiment. However you 
came to my aid and had me taken to the Creek 
Nation where I rapidly recovered. And I hope that 
your temporary removal from Beauvoir to New 
Orleans will result in a like benefit to your health, 
and that when the long roll is sounded you will find 
yourself in the camp of the Great Commander. 

I am your old Sergeant-Major of the First 
Dragoons." 

Reader, let me hope that when the long roll is 
sounded you and I will be in the camp of that same 
Great Commander. 

Soon after the incident referred to in the Sergeant's 
letter, Davis, longing for the quieter life of a planter, 
on June 30, 1835, resigned from the Army, and in 
July married Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of 
General Taylor, whom he had been in love with and 
engaged to, for over two years. Now, his enemies, 
passion at its height, and with pens dripping with gall, 
declared, in an article which appeared in an encyclo- 
pedia, that beside being a slaveholder and a plotting 
traitor he was base enough to elope with Miss 
Taylor; but here are the facts. 

When his daughter's engagement to Davis was 
announced, the General told a friend that he had 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 25 

only the kindliest feelings for her choice, but he had 
hoped that not one of his daughters would marry 
into the Army and undergo the inconveniences and 
hardships that he had met with in his own soldier life. 

Subsequently a garrison court-martial was ordered, 
with Taylor as president, the other members a 
Major ''Tom" Smith (between whom and Taylor 
there was a bitter feud), Davis and a young officer 
who had just reported for duty and who, when the 
Court assembled, appeared in citizen's dress, explain- 
ing that his uniform for some reason or other had 
not been forwarded from St. Louis, his last station. 
Taylor, a stickler for customs and rules, was unwill- 
ing to go on with the cases until the lieutenant 
could take his seat in uniform with sword at his 
side. An angry discussion at once broke out between 
him and Smith over the question of proceeding and, 
to the old General's surprise and disgust, Davis 
voted with Smith to go on with the trial. A col- 
loquy at once took place between Taylor and Davis 
over his vote, which was ended by the old General 
letting fly an oath — and in that line we fear he 
shared with his fellow Army and Navy officers a 
fairly strong vocabulary — that any man who 
would vote with ''Tom" Smith on a question of 
that kind should never, never marry one of his 
daughters, and forbade Davis from ever entering 
his house. 

It is with a smile my eye rests on that group; 



26 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and I wonder how many young officers of this day, 
engaged as Davis was to the old General's daughter, 
would have voted against him? Not one in a hun- 
dred we venture to say. Major "Tom" Smith 
would have been outvoted and the Court adjourned 
till the careless lieutenant could appear properly, 
full uniform, epaulettes, sash and sword, the accused 
meanwhile confined in the guardhouse. 

When a year or more had elapsed after this amus- 
ing court-martial scene. Miss Taylor told her father 
that, as he had not alleged anything against the 
character or honor of her lover, she was going to 
marry him. But that vote with ''Tom" Smith 
was still rankling and he would not give his consent ; 
so she made her arrangements to go to her . aunt 
in Kentucky and there be married. A stateroom 
was taken on a boat for St. Louis, a Captain McRee 
escorted Miss Taylor to the landing and lo, there 
was her father transacting some business; she 
made a final appeal to him, but without avail, and 
sailed away to Kentucky, and in the house of her 
aunt and in the presence of two of General Taylor's 
sisters and many others of the Taylor family they 
were married June, 1835. And this, Jefferson Davis' 
enemies with a sneer called an elopement; much 
to the amusement of Satan's secretaries at their 
desks. 

They set out at once for his plantation, ''Brier- 
field" on the Mississippi, a part of "Hurricane," 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 27 

the greater plantation of his brother, Joseph Emory, 
some thirty miles below Vicksburg. In August, to 
escape the chill-and-fever malady which the unac- 
climated to that region had to go through, they 
went to his sister's plantation, Locust Grove, 
Bayou Sara, Louisiana. But the dreaded, enfeebling 
disease had sown its seeds and within a day or two 
both came down with it and soon were dangerously 
sick. Chill after chill is followed by a raging fever 
in this ailment and, under its ravages day and night, 
it was not long till Mrs. Davis became delirious and 
her end drew near. Mr. Davis meanwhile was not 
told of her condition, but on hearing her voice a 
few hours before she breathed her last, September 15, 
— she had begun to sing in her delirium ''Faery 
Bells," a song she had sung to him many a time, — 
he struggled from his sick chamber to her room 
and found her dying. She was buried in his sister's 
plantation graveyard, and there she lies. ''Faery 
Bells" ! and the pathos of it all! Malignity, Vitu- 
peration and Vindictiveness, ill-visaged trio, and boon 
companions of the Devil's secretaries, a word with 
you. Miss Taylor had not eloped with her lover, 
and you should have kept away from that lone grave 
on Bayou Sara! 

After days and days during which his life hung 
in the balance, his faithful colored servant, James 
Pemberton, lifted him from his bed and carried 
him home, but a cough set in and late in the year, 



28 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

for the benefit of his health, he went to Cuba, and 
the following spring made his way home through 
New York and Washington. 

At Washington he fell in with his Transylvanian 
friend, Jones, he who had given him shelter the 
night he was lost some forty miles from Fort Crawford 
and whom meanwhile ambition and ability had lifted 
from a cabin to the United States Senate. With 
him and others, Jefferson Davis called on the Presi- 
dent, Martin Van Buren, who interested in his talk, 
asked Davis to breakfast with him. 

Axfter breakfast Van Buren, who like Davis put 
a stake on personal care and appearance, noticing 
his guest's shoes, a fine pair that set off his small, 
proudly arched feet, inquired, ''Where did you get 
those shoes, may I ask?" "New Orleans, Mr. 
President," replied Davis. "I had a pair like that 
made in France," said Van Buren, ''but I have 
never seen that stitch since." 

Van Buren was noted for his grace and good 
breeding and was the first to adorn the White 
House wdth here and there a rare, precious bowl 
and vase filled with roses; when I last saw his grave 
at Kinderhook tall half-wild grass was waving over 
it, and lichens were slowly stitching their gray seals 
on his time-bleached marble tombstone. 



CHAPTER III 

In due time Jefferson Davis' eyes, after a passage 
over the Alleghenies by stage and down the Ohio 
and Mississippi by boat, fell on his blooming cotton 
fields and then on his empty house. Faery Bells! 
He turned his steps away from it and sought his 
brother's door and there for five or six years made 
his home. 

Now, since in those four or five years of practi- 
cally unbroken seclusion the wealth of intellectual 
acquirements, knowledge of science, history and 
literature that distinguished and adorned his official 
and private life were harvested and the foundations 
of the political views which determined his career 
were laid, let us look at his plantation life and 
surroundings. 

It was his rule, summer and winter, to pass 
hours every day in the fields on familiar terms with 
his slaves; and, as a result, abundant were his crops 
of cotton and corn, for many a light-hearted song had 
been sung as they grew into blade, bloom and tassel. 
"His system for the government of his slaves 
provided for a regular court with a judge, jury and 
sheriff of their own body for the trial of all offenses 
committed by slaves against each other or serious 

29 



30 JEFFERSON DAVlS 

violations of rules or proprieties. His servant 
James Pemberton was the judge of this court and 
the only appeal from its decisions was to Davis 
himself, who invariably modified or remitted the 
sentences when severe. When Pemberton died, 
Davis had to hire white overseers, but in no case 
were they permitted to inflict corporal punishment. 
Any skilled workman, as blacksmith or carpenter, 
was allowed to do work for neighl^ring plantations, 
returning to his master conamon day-laborer's pay 
and keeping the rest for himself. A missionary of 
the Methodist Church was engaged and his salary 
paid for religious training of the slaves. When a 
marriage took place Mrs. Davis supplied the wed- 
ding gown and when death came the master mani- 
fested his sympathy with the sorrowful. Those who 
were still living when death fell upon him, sent Mrs. 
Davis this letter: 

We, the old servants and tenants of our beloved 
master. Honorable Jefferson Davis, have cause to 
mingle our tears over his death who was always 
so kind and thoughtful of our peace and happiness. 
We extend to you our humble sympathy. 
Respectfully, 
Your old tenants and servants. 

This letter should have been among the historic 
papers in the hermetically sealed copper box set in 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 31 

the foundation of his monument that stands on the 
banks of the James in Hollywood Cemetery, Rich- 
mond; for it is a bit of enduring evidence as to the 
kind of man he was far outweighing the work of 
my or any pen. 

His diversion was a stud of thoroughbreds, for 
he and his brother were lovers of the turf and, by 
the way, in their stables was Black Oliver, a Cana- 
dian horse, one of whose sons, a pony-like pacer, 
was taken from the plantation in the Vicksburg 
campaign and given to Grant, who named him Jeff 
Davis and rode him from time to time, and this 
horse's neck I once stroked on our way from the 
Rapidan to Appomattox. 

His nights and every leisure hour, for he was a 
born student, were passed in his brother's library, 
that was fairly large for those days and on whose 
shelves, beside the British poets, Spectator and Tatler, 
were all the standard works on the history of the 
Constitution, the Federalist, Elliott's Debates, etc., 
which in his solitude he read and reread. He and 
his brother meanwhile followed with the keenest 
interest the acrimonious discussion going on in 
Congress and the press over slavery, the original 
rights and sovereignty of the States, prerogatives 
indisputable to their minds. 

But there was no one, however, to challenge the 
soundness of these convictions or the ultimate 
results if insisted upon, for they were alone in an 



32 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

almost primeval wilderness; and about that let me 
say something, for the wilderness breeds an unself- 
conscious, indomitable, transparent personality and 
type of mind of its own. 

The isolation and solitude of their plantations, 
as well as those throughout the South and especially 
the Gulf States, was very deep. They were in the 
midst of miles of solemn woods shadowing the leaf- 
stained waters of many sluggish streams and miasma- 
breeding swamps, and over all a heavy, brooding 
silence, broken by day, now near, now far, by cow- 
bells, some keyed high, some keyed low, and at 
night by the lonely voice of an owl or the yelps of 
a band of prowling wolves. Now I am fain to think 
an isolation of that depth and kind is bound to play 
a part in the character of the human life it sur- 
rounds, developing not only the native senses of 
courage and freedom, but also a reflecting serious- 
ness and the .habit of looking at all questions as 
when in the woods, through vistas only. Moreover, 
the loneliness of a wilderness breeds a longing for 
human speech, and to gratify that longing its cabin 
and hewed log house indwellers would travel, as we 
are told and I know from boyhood experience, miles 
and miles to attend religious and political meetings. 
And once there what would they hear in those early 
days? Not so much the language of reason or induc- 
tive philosophy, but assertion and the figurative 
language of feeling; and, as feeling is the kindler of 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 33 

eloquence, which in turn is but the utterance of 
emotion, they followed with rapture the preacher 
and the pohtician, for they were expressing their 
own suppressed emotions. And that, let me venture 
to say, is what made the sermons and the speeches 
of the Southern and Western orators so radiant and 
teeming with pathos and sentiment. It was sup- 
pressed emotions, too, that made the touching 
eloquence of the Indian chiefs. 

Again, culture's clouds of doubt and disbelief did 
not hang over the minds of the speakers or audience; 
heaven and hell were realities to the shouting 
preacher; and in the years before the war when the 
stump orator in fierce tones, with extended right 
arm and closed fist, declared the sovereignty of the 
States, they were also realities — for did not his 
hearers breathe the very air of independence in 
their boundless woods, and had they not inherited 
as Davis, Lee, and every other Southerner of prom- 
inence, the idea of the sovereignty of the original 
colonies, not as a theory but as an indisputable fact? 

Truly, truly, the natural feelings of the lonely 
dwellers in the piny woods of the South played a big, 
yes a profoundly dramatic part in the mighty sec- 
tional struggle; and those of us who had to meet 
their sons on the fields of Virginia, slaveholders or 
non-slaveholders, and be it remembered that not 
one in thirty of the great Stonewall Brigade, and 
probably not in one twenty of Pickett's Charge, 



34 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was a slaveholder, soon realized we were facing a 
foe of indomitable courage, fortified with heartfelt 
convictions as to political rights. General Sedgwick, 
who was killed at Spotsylvania, wrote to his sister 
just after Pope's defeat at Manassas, "the enemy 
have outgeneraled us. Their hearts are in the cause. ^^ 
What musket, what cannon matches the heart in 
defense of home or a nation's life? Oh, faithful, 
gallant, liberty-loving organ! You are the comrade 
on the battlefield for me; let it be a field of defeat 
or victory. 

So then, let us not lose sight of this wilderness 
background with its depths of primitive feelings and 
convictions, not only in Jefferson Davis' case, but 
the men who carried the colors of the Confederacy. 
For the failure of historians to appreciate duly the 
state of mind and heart in the South, ascribable in 
great measure to the influences of their wilderness 
homes, has done more, in my opinion, than any one 
thing to mislead them as to the cause of the War 
and to be unfair in their judgment of the Southern 
people. 

Such then was the background of woods, pohtical 
beliefs and intense provincialism in the plantation Hf e 
of Jefferson Davis. 

Now, since of all these influences the one that 
played the great and, as it turned out, fatal part 
in his life and that of the Southern people was the 
doctrine of State Rights, let us look up its grounds, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 35 

for we think it essential to a fair judgment on him 
and them. 

Our first colonists, as we all know, settled, some 
on the majestic James, some on the sand dunes of 
Cape Cod, some on the mountain-born Delaware, 
and some on the Savannah. 

Fortunately for the planting of good manners and 
the ideals of the scholar and the gentleman, the 
first that landed were largely drawn from the aristo- 
cratic cavalier class of Old England, and the second 
the Pilgrims who brought the roots and planted 
them of a pure democracy infused with a stern 
morality. To me it is truly mysterious but elating 
that the genius to preside over the New World saw 
to it that these brightest ornaments of a nation, 
scholarship, good manners, high ideals and a democ- 
racy purely representative, acknowledging a spiritual 
kingdom, should characterize the two foundation 
colonies, New England and Virginia. 

But when and wherever they landed, they all 
carried with them the primal ideas of English law 
and customs; and no sooner were the little groups 
conscious of the necessity of established government, 
than each crystallized around certain religious and 
political dogmas; organized with a seat of govern- 
ment on the Unes of an absolutely independent body, 
with rivers and mountains, as a rule, for their 
boundaries. Within these limits their original sov- 
ereignties were not to be questioned by any neigh- 



36 JEFFERSON DAVIS • 

boring colony. And so deeply had the spirit of 
these local sovereignties breathed into the daily Hfe, 
that when the mother country undertook to sub- 
ordinate this sovereignty under the guise of taxation, 
they rebelled ; and on the fields of Lexington, Saratoga, 
Cowpens, King's Mountain and Yorktown they 
fought it out and won. Now what is most signifi- 
cant and important, as bearing on the ground of 
original State Rights, is this, when the peace was 
signed the King of England signed it acknowledging 
by name each of the thirteen colonies. 

Here then in the King's acknowledgment of each 
colony's sovereignty, we have the birthplace of the 
doctrine of State Rights, with its fateful corollary 
of a right to secede from the Union. It would be 
idle in the light of the past to discuss that claim, 
the graves that were filled in four years of war to 
support it are arguments against it; notwithstand- 
ing, had that question been submitted to the States 
prior to 1830 for determination, it would, in my 
belief, have been carried unanimously in the affirma- 
tive. It was practically asserted by New England 
at Hartford, 1814, and even as late as 1854 the little 
hamlet of Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, voted 
solemnly in_town meeting urging its representative 
in Congress to take the stand of going out of the 
Union if a further extension of slavery were allowed. 

One word before we leave the question of State 
Rights — each of the original colonies was repre- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 37 

sented by a star in the blue field of our national 
colors. The founders of the nation chose their 
emblem from the over-arching heavens. Shall we 
substitute in that field the waxing crescents of big 
commercial interests, or a milky way of dreamy, 
confused political theories? No, let us follow as our 
forefathers did the ways of Heaven and keep the 
stars of our flag undimmed in their original glory, 
revolving around the central sun, the Constitution, 
but each independent in its orbit. 

And now a word as to slavery, which, although 
originally it had nothing whatsoever to do with the 
theory of State Rights, became its synonym with all 
its curse and universal condemnation. Yet in the 
early days slavery was recognized. North as well as 
South, as lawful; and the owner of a captured 
Pequot Indian in New England or a purchased Afri- 
can in the South had the protection of the law for 
the enjoyment of his slave property. 

It is only fair to the South, which by a strange 
fate had to bear the ignominy of slavery and 
through secession to be the last indirect defender 
of its curse, to say that more than once in colonial 
days she tried to free herself from the abomination. 
The Virginia House of Burgesses passed twenty- 
three acts to prohibit the further import of slaves, 
and the Kng of England vetoed all of them; even 
South Carolina, as late as 1760, enacted a similar 
law against bringing in more slaves which the King 



38 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

vetoed, so profitable was the degrading, pitiless 
slave trade to England's sordid commercial interest. 
Again^ when the Constitution was adopted its 
first draft provided for terminating the slave trade 
in 1800; an amendment was offered extending the 
time to 1808, and it was carried, every vote from 
the North for it, and all but one from the South 
against it. New England ships, like those of old 
England, were in the business; sailing out of Salem, 
Boston and Newport to the west coast of Africa 
to pack, in unspeakable cruelty, their between- 
decks with the poor creatures bought with rum and 
trinkets. The fii'st English ship devoted to the slave 
trade was called the Jesm, and the first American, 
built at ]\Iarblehead, was named the Desire, ^^^lat 
contrasts their names and their commerce suggest! 
It is unnecessary to state that enormous profits 
were made in the horrible traffic. Wliere was the 
New England conscience in those days? But let 
all this be as it may, long before the period dealt 
with in this biography two mighty and noble-browed 
advocates. Sympathy and Justice, had appealed in 
behalf of the poor slave to the heart of the world, 
and a movement backed by the finer instincts of 
our natures had set in to put an end to slavery. 
Virginia at an early day, under the influence of that 
appeal, came within one vote of abolishing the curse 
and shame, and many, like John Randolph of Roa- 
noke, emancipated their slaves. | Unfortunately for 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 39 

Virginia and her sister States, that movement toward 
emancipation was checked by two causes and at 
last died out: first, an invention for clearing the 
cotton fibre from the seed thereby making slave 
labor very profitable; and second, resentment over 
the abuse and obloquy which opponents of slavery 
heaped on the slaveholder. 

In the beginning, the condemnation of slavery 
was predicated on gentle and holy morals, but after 
the unnatural alliance of hate, obloquy and religion, 
the movement in the North changed rapidly into an 
inveterate crusade against slavery led on by what 
was known as the Abohtion Party whose news- 
papers by 1838, the Liberator, Emancipator, Phil- 
anthropist, National Enquirer and New York Evan- 
gelist were reaching the homes of thousands in the 
North. It has long been observed that an issue 
involving a moral question, like that those periodi- 
cals were advocating, breeds bigoted radicals who 
through temperament invariably make everything 
personal and become, sooner or later, combative and 
abusive toward whoever challenges the wisdom of 
their views or refrains from joining in carrying 
them out. 

A survey of those time-yellowing sheets will dis- 
close that their columns were filled with sermons, 
addresses at conventions, editorials, and letters 
from farmers who tilled the rock-strewn winter-wind 
swept fields of New England, all breathing a ferocious 



40 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

intolerance not only against slavery, but against 
the slaveholder himself; some going so far in their 
wrought-up state of mind as to suggest, approve 
and encourage an insurrection of the slaves. That 
the appalling Santo Domingo insurrection, when gray- 
haired, trembling old age, and babyhood in the cradle 
with its smiles and innocence were all left butchered, 
should not have drowned the cry of mercy in their 
natures, is simply astounding, for many were not 
only intelligent, but when not on the slavery 
question, reasonable and charitable. 

The present generation can have only a faint 
notion of the intensity of the personal antipathy to 
slaveholders and aversion from the South generally 
by the members of the Abolition Party. 

Naturally enough this antipathy was reciprocated 
with full measure of scorn and disdain by the slave- 
holder, and indeed by the poorest whites of the 
pineclad sand hills and swamps of the South. 

Without a due appreciation of that long and deep- 
rooted aversion and estrangement of the sections, 
beginning, as we are convinced it did, away back in 
old England from a marked difference in the point 
of view of the part religion should play in social and 
governmental life, the conflict between the shrewd- 
ness of a commercial and the rustic simplicity of an 
agricultural life, and at last by that inborn hatred of 
aristocracy, intensified by the acknowledged and 
actual social and political preeminence of the South 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 41 

— we say that without a full appreciation of all the 
above facts, — the War of the Rebellion will not, 
we fear, be fully understood, or the leaders. North 
and South, be duly, be fairly portrayed against the 
stormy background. 



CHAPTER IV 

Davis' emergence from obscurity and the loneli- 
ness of the wilderness came about in this way. 
Two ambitious Whigs, owing to the overwhelming 
majorities cast by their party in Warren County, 
were candidates for a seat in the Mississippi legis- 
lature of 1843. The Democrats, encouraged by the 
rivalry between the Whigs, put a candidate in the 
field, but within a week of the election became dis- 
satisfied with him and dropped him, and asked 
Davis to take his place. He accepted, and at once 
the Whigs, scenting danger, forced one of their candi- 
dates to withdraw and Davis, instead of leading 
followers inspired with prospective triumph, led a 
forlorn hope. 

The Whigs, to make victory sure, called on Pren- 
tiss, the greatest orator of his day, and whose fame 
still lingers along the lower Mississippi like the glow 
on the clouds from a setting sun, to come to their 
aid. Moreover, they arranged for a joint debate 
between him and Davis, who had never made a 
political speech in his life. He was defeated as he 
expected to be, although he cut down materially 
the usual Whig majority. But he had held his own 
so well with the famous orator, that the next year 

42 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 43 

he was sent as a delegate to a Democratic state 
convention for the selection of a presidential candi- 
date. He there made a speech in behalf of Calhoun, 
from whom as Secretary of War under Monroe he 
had received his appointment to West Point, that 
brought the convention to its feet with wild applause, 
and the same fall he was named an elector-at-large 
on the Polk and Dallas ticket. Davis canvassed the 
State from one end to the other and was elected. 
His readiness, breadth and clearness of view, aug- 
mented by a manifest sincerity and depth of con- 
viction — he never harangued — and that charm of 
voice and manner that stayed with him to the end, 
so won the hearts, not only of the lank '' crackers" 
in the piny woods, but those of his fellow cultivated 
planters, that in the following summer, 1845, they 
elected him by a vote of the _Staterat3larg^e to 
Congress. 

During the campaign the question of the payment 
of the bonds issued by the State for the stock of 
certain banks having spht both parties, the leader 
of the Democratic party announced that no anti- 
repudiator should have his vote or influence, where- 
upon Davis wrote a pamphlet against repudiation. 

His friends advised, implored him not to make it 
pubUc, but he went at once to the repudiator leader, 
a Mr. Briscoe, and showed it to him. "Didn't you 
know," observed Briscoe, "I said I would not vote 
for any man holding these opinions?" "Yes," 



44 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

replied Davis, ''and therefore I thought you ought 
to know mine." 

That Briscoe in the end voted for him is not of 
importance, but in the Hght of this evidence we will 
leave it to any fair-minded man whether or not the 
charge made with trumpets, so to speak, against 
Davis when the Confederacy was trying to nego- 
tiate a loan in England, and reiterated long after 
the war was over by Roosevelt, the most frequent 
and shrillest crowing cock on the roost and off the 
roost, in politics of his day, was justified. 

Of all the many charges brought against him not 
one ever struck deeper or wounded him more sorely; 
and again and again, as he trod the path of his old 
age, he protested and reprotested this honor-tainting 
accusation. 

Before entering upon that campaign, Davis had 
become engaged to the daughter of W. B. Howell, 
whose plantation home was on a bluff near Natchez. 
Their acquaintance began while she was on a visit 
with his brother's family at ''Hurricane," conducted 
thither by a warm friend of her father. Judge George 
Winchester, a distinguished lawyer, originally from 
Salem, Massachusetts, who had become a slave- 
holder like his fellow Northerners, Sergeant Prentiss 
of Maine, Gen. John J. Quitman of New York, and 
Robert J. Walker of Pennsylvania, leading spirits 
in the defense and rights of slavery and strong advo- 
cators of the annexation of Texas. But surely in 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 45 

the judge's case, whatsoever might have been his 
Puritanic notions of slavery, a wide plantation on 
the Mississippi with cotton fields in bloom was a 
very different thing from a mournful hillside farm 
with its stunted cedars on Cape Ann. The judge, 
I have no doubt, fully appreciating the difference, 
luxuriated in the contrast and had no compunctions 
about the institution, sweetly as might his boyhood's 
memory cherish the church bells of Salem and the 
beams of Baker's Island lights in its harbor. But, 
in a contest between morals and wealth with its 
ease, distinction and freedom from care for a seat 
at the right hand of our conscience, the chances I 
think, and am sorry to say so, are heavy in favor of 
the latter; and yet I have no misgiving that the old 
judge was a right companionable, good-hearted New 
Englander, notwithstanding he turned slaveholder. 
Here is the first letter of his charge. Miss Howell, 
to her mother. ''Today Uncle Joe [Joseph Emory 
Davis] sent, by his younger brother [did you know 
he had one?] an urgent invitation to me to go at 
once to the 'Hurricane.' [She had stopped on her 
way at the plantation of Mrs. David McCaleb, Mr. 
Joseph Davis' eldest daughter.] I do not know 
whether this Mr. Jefferson Davis is young or old. 
He looks both at times; but I believe he is old, for 
from what I hear he is only two years younger than 
you are. He impresses me as a remarkable kind of 
man, but of uncertain temper, and has a way of 



46 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

taking for granted that everybody agrees with him 
when he expresses an opinion, which offends me; 
yet he is most agreeable and has a peculiarly sweet 
voice and a winning manner of asserting himself. 
The fact is, he is the kind of person I should expect 
to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk, but to 
insist upon a stoical indifference to the fright after- 
ward. I do not think I shall ever like him as I do 
his brother Joe. Would you beUeve it, he is refined 
and cultivated, and yet a Democrat!" 

Having been born and bred a Democrat this sur- 
prise of the Whig miss over Jeff's refinement and 
cultivation "and yet a Democrat!" brings a smile. 
For all that, those discerning young eyes had not 
failed to note the one main weakness in his char- 
acter, namely, taking it for granted that whosoever 
had thought the matter out as he had thought it 
out must have reached the same conclusion as he 
had reached. It was a trait, notwithstanding the 
good breeding with which it was manifested, that she 
did not like, nor did any of his political adversaries 
ever like. But in this connection let me venture to 
say that tenacity and obstinacy of opinion are dis- 
tinctively a product of the wilderness, as well as 
the solitude of a cloistral life at a university, or 
social isolation. Men who have reached conclusions 
under such conditions are, as a rule, willful and un- 
manageable; Mr. Lincoln — Davis' reverse historic 
counterpart — was no exception to this rule; for 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 47 

with equal pertinacity he held to his opinions, but 
he was vastly more sagacious in their presentation 
and defense. 

In the spring of 1845, Jefferson Davis and Miss 
Howell were married at her home in Natchez; and 
when Davis took the boat at Vicksburg with his 
faithful servant, James Pemberton, for the wedding, 
lo! who should be aboard but General Taylor on 
his way to New Orleans to take command of the 
troops destined for the Mexican border. Davis had 
not seen or heard from him since he left Prairie du 
Chien some ten years gone by and keen was his 
pleasure when Taylor greeted him with spontaneous 
cordiality; and as they journeyed on, their old-time 
relations of mutual regard and esteem were resumed. 
The good angels are near nations and individuals 
when, under reconciUation's gracious powers, the 
warm hand is reached out again and the eye beams 
again with the old-time friendship. 

This interview with Taylor must have made the 
day doubly happy for Davis, and I have no doubt 
his heart wasllighter therefor as he reached the door 
of his bride's plantation home, its servants in their 
best bib and tucker, the air filled with the fragrance 
of the wild grape, yellow jessamine and magnolia. 

Late that autumn, Davis and his wife, who had 
soft, liquid, dark eyes, a voice of Southern charm and 
was a ready, pleasing talker, went to Washington and 
on December 8, 1845, he took his seat in Congress. 



CHAPTER V 

As I have taken, in the preceding pages, some pains 
to set forth Jefferson Davis' surroundings on the 
plantation, convinced that in his case and that of 
every man who makes a mark in the world, they 
leave indelible traces of their handiwork in intellec- 
tual development and are the sources of certain 
fadeless lines in character, I shall dwell for a moment 
on his new surroundings and some of the issues 
engrossing the attention of Congress. 

There were four great figures masterful in mind, 
personality and achievement with whom he was 
brought face to face, John Quincy Adams, Clay, 
Webster and Calhoun. In the eyes of Davis, Cal- 
houn was easily the greatest, but from the viewpoint 
of historic perpetuity he now stands off and alone 
from them all in the deep shadow that slavery cast; 
while Clay, on the contrary, stands in the warm 
beams of a life-long desire to reconcile the sections, 
Adams in the perpetual light that is shed from his 
diary, and Webster in that of his vision of the 
Union's glorified destiny, a vision that rallied the 
forces of the North to accept the challenge for its 
disruption and with a result that we all know. 

In Congress and the Cabinet were many able, 

48 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 49 

strong men. Seward whose fame will last welded as 
it is to Lincoln's, Giddings of Ohio, the Abolition 
champion with glowing white teeth and defiant 
personal courage; Chase and Toombs both handsome, 
large, striking men who were destined alike to life- 
long disappointed ambition, — Chase to be the 
leader of the North instead of Lincoln, Toombs the 
presidency of the Confederacy instead of Davis, — 
Crittenden, the venerable, well-bred gentleman of 
Kentucky, Winthrop of Massachusetts wearing 
her mantle of social and intellectual aristocracy, 
Stephens of Georgia, and many others who played 
mighty parts in the Rebellion. What a contrast to 
the quiet loneHness and undisputed sway of a 
plantation on the Mississippi! 

Mrs. Davis in her Memoirs throws this light upon 
the outset of her husband's Congressional life. ''He 
visited very little, studied until two or three o'clock 
in the morning, and, with my assistance, did all his 
writing, franking documents, letters, etc." This 
would seem to indicate that he did not trust to the 
inspiration of the moment to discuss a question in 
Congress. 

She further says that the only one he visited 
beside old army friends, was Calhoun, and as we 
know, by following in his steps they led him to 
Calhoun's place in the leadership of the South and 
at last to manacles at Fort Monroe. 

Early in that session he made a speech, but not a 



50 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

long one, on the Oregon boundary issue. Savage, a 
newspaper reporter and author, says of it that when 
Davis began his speech, — and we easily catch the 
vibrant tones of his carrying voice, — Southern 
friends of mine who heard him often have told me 
they were a combination of the trumpet and harp — 
Adams drew near him for it was his habit to listen 
carefully to the first set speech of a new member, 
apparently to discover if it were worth while for 
him to pay attention the next time the speaker had 
the floor. "At the close of the speech," goes on 
Savage, "Adams crossed over to some friends and 
said, 'That young man, gentlemen, is no ordinary 
man. He will make his mark yet, mind me.' " 

The country at that time was in high fever, from 
one end to the other, over the admission of Texas 
by joint resolution of Congress after a prolonged 
debate marked with sustained earnestness and 
extreme acrimony; for slavery, as usual, was at 
the fore and charged with reaching out, as in the 
Louisiana Purchase, for more territory to increase 
her power in the national councils; when, as a 
matter of fact, as Time's outgoing tide has revealed, 
it was not slavery, but the Genius of our country 
making her way to the Pacific in fulfillment of her 
preordained destiny yet meeting a furious New 
England's resistance at every step. 

Adams, who led the opposition to the annexation 
of Texas, angered over defeat, prophesied that it 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 51 

would be the death of the Union. He is in his grave, 
and, lo! today his New England's cotton mills 
rejoice as they spin Texas cotton, and the country's 
ships, propelled by Texas oil, sail proudly bearing 
the products of their looms across the sea. 

The fires of this discussion over slavery were still 
smoking when up flamed a long-smoldering dispute 
with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary. 
Both countries were in bad humor. Parliament had 
voted unanimously on a call from Peel for supplies 
to get ready for conflict, and the people beyond the 
Alleghenies were longing to cross swords with 
England. 

''Unfortunately," said Davis at the beginning of 
his speech, 'Hhe opinion has gone forth that no 
politician dared to be the advocate of peace when 
the question of war is mooted. That will be an evil 
hour — when it shall be in the power of any dema- 
gogue or fanatic to raise a war clamor and control 
the legislation of the country. The evils of war 
must fall upon the people, and with them the war 
feeling should originate. We, their representatives, 
are but a mirror to reflect the light, and never should 
become a torch to fire the pile." 

He then went on and discussed — and we think 
ably and fairly — the reasonableness of the claims 
of the disputed boundary lines, recommending, 
however strong our case might be theoretically, yet 
in view of all the consequences, we should accede 



52 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to an honorable compromise. As slavery had been 
thrust into the discussion, as in all questions of a 
national character after the rise of the Abolition 
Party, and the usual sheet lightning had flashed 
from the low-down war-gathering cloud of the sec- 
tions, Davis before he closed, touched the chords 
that bound the Union; how in the hearts of North 
and South the names of the battlefields of the Revo- 
lution were mingled in pride and affection, and 
exclaimed. ''What Southern man would wish it less 
by one of the Northern names of which it is com- 
posed? Or where is he, gazing on the obelisk, 
[referring to Bunker Hill Monument] that rises 
from the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, 
would feel his patriot's pride suppressed by local 
jealousy? Type of the men, the event, the purpose it 
commemorates . . . pointing like a finger to the 
sources of noblest thought, a beacon of freedom, it 
guides the present generation to contemplate the 
scene where Massachusetts and Virginia, as stronger 
brothers of the family, stood foremost to defend our 
common rights." This reference to the monument 
overlooking Boston must have pleased Adams. 

It is not my purpose or desire to encumber this 
narrative with speeches, but this one reveals what I 
believe to be the real Jefferson Davis, a man of 
moral courage, of standards far above the level of 
the demagogue and fanatic, and gifted with a rare 
ornament, namely, a mind where reason and imagi- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 53 

nation both play around the subjects that appeal 
to it. 

The speech, which has just been referred to, was 
made on the sixth of February, and in May he was 
appointed on a committee empowered to ask for 
State papers and reports on some outrageous 
charges against Webster in the use of secret funds 
while Secretary of State under Tyler, alleging that 
not only had he used those funds to corrupt the 
press, but was a ''delinquent and defaulter" to the 
sum of over five thousand dollars. 

This scandalous resolution, to the disgrace of 
Congress, was carried by a vote of one hundred 
thirty-six yeas to twenty-eight nays. But, we must 
remember that Webster loomed as a candidate of 
the Whigs for the next presidency, that greatness 
breeds envy, and that in both parties there are 
always shoals of cheap, shifty politicians. There 
was no lack of them in the Democratic party, who, 
for political advantage, were base enough to hope 
the committee's report, which was practically 
written by Davis, although if it in the main should 
exonerate Webster yet by implication would leave 
a stain. The night before the committee reported, 
one of them went to see Davis and hinted that he 
hoped it would not ''white-wash" Webster. Davis 
fired up over the dishonorable suggestion, and said, 
"No one could deprecate his [Webster's] policy 
more than I do," but, that he would not make a 



54 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

false and partisan report, or parley with his sense 
of justice and honor. 

Webster, after the finding was submitted exon- 
erating him completely, went to see Davis and 
expressed in warm terms his appreciation of the 
manly way he had dealt with the matter. Later he 
called on Mrs. Davis and invited them to visit him 
at Marshfield. 

As the spirits of the dead in their transcendent 
rest are free from all mortality's bickerings, I am 
fain to believe that Webster's met that of Davis 
with a warm hand at the end of its upward flight, 
for as Bacon says, ''The nobler a soul is, the more 
objects of compassion it hath." 

Not long after this report on the Webster charges, 
a resolution of thanks to Taylor and his men for 
victories won over Mexican forces on the Texas 
border was offered in Congress. Davis made a 
fervent speech in its favor, saying that, as a friend 
of the Army, his heart rejoiced that there was a 
disposition in the House to deal justly and generously 
with the defenders of the country's colors; that too 
often and too long had they had to listen to harsh 
and invidious reflections on the Army and the 
accomplished officers who commanded it; that now, 
as an American, his heart in response to whatsoever 
illustrates our national character or adds glory to 
the name, rejoiced at the recent triumphs. Yet it 
was no more than he expected, or when occasions 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 55 

offer, it would achieve again. And then in fine 
strain he went on, — ''It was the triumph of Ameri- 
can courage, professional skill, and that patriotic 
pride which blooms in the breast of every educated 
soldier," — a simile that must have been pleasing to the 
ear of his stern old Alma Mater on the Hudson, and 
as one of his fellow graduates, it pleases my ear too. 

Davis, continuing his speech, spoke of a bastioned 
field work and how, through the science of its con- 
struction, it had stood bombardment practically 
harmless while its fire had crumbled the stone walls 
of Matamoras; and then, turning to a member of 
the House, who had denounced the Academy and 
its graduates, made an ill-fated and unmitigated 
blunder by asking him if he believed a blacksmith 
or a tailor could have secured like results. 

Now it so happened that the Congressman who had 
made the charges and had been a blacksmith — but 
Davis did not know it — retorted, not angrily, being 
blessed with a genial temper, but well, saying in 
effect, that the days when he was the companion of 
the blazing forge and the ringing anvil were proud 
days, and moreover that General Greene of Revolu- 
tionary fame had been a blacksmith also. Andrew 
Johnson, however, Lincoln's successor in the Presi- 
dency, who had been a tailor in his youth and had 
had to fight his way up against a domineering class 
founded on wealth and family, fretting under Davis' 
unwarrantable yet unintentional aspersion, rose the 



56 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

next day and gritted out: ''He knew we had an 
illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy 
who assumed to know a great deal, but when the 
flimsy veil of pretension was torn from it, was 
shown to possess neither talents nor information," 
and declaring that when a blow was struck upon 
the class he had sprung from, ''either direct or by 
innuendo, he would resent it." 

Davis, in reply, said with deep earnestness that 
his reference to the tailor and the blacksmithing 
trades was wholly, wholly misunderstood, that he 
merely wanted to show that an education, either by 
teaching or by experience was necessary in every 
professional career and that once for all he would 
say, "that if he knew himself, he was incapable of 
wantonly wounding the feelings or of making invidi- 
ous reflections upon the origin or occupation of any 
man." But all to no avail, so far as Johnson was 
concerned; his feelings had been hurt, and in all 
likelihood it was not the first time by the speech 
or bearing of some of his Southern colleagues, not 
one of whom, by the way, had in combination of 
manner, tone and ability more of the aristocrat 
than Davis. 

Yet, how truly and thoroughly this controversial 
incident, so unexpected and unhappy, illustrates a 
trait in human nature, namely, that the composure 
of a man sure of his station, born with a certain 
austerity of manner and gifted with power of easy 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 57 

and telling speech, always shoots a chilliness that 
provokes combative mediocrity whose chief weapons 
are obloquy and reproach. That was Davis' mis- 
fortune, and although he was without a single 
affectation or lacking a heart for the warmest friend- 
ships, yet his combination of fine manners, cool 
self-control and certain dignity that stood off unwar- 
ranted famiUarity, was the source of much of the 
hatred which neither punishment nor death appeased. 

I have said that his blunder in bringing in the 
blacksmith and the tailor was ill-fated. What I 
had in mind was this — its probable contribution in 
establishing Johnson's final antagonism to the 
Confederacy which made East Tennessee practically 
loyal, and by its appeal for defense from the North 
threatened the life of the Confederacy at every stage 
of its four years' struggle. 

Well, Andrew Johnson is buried among the stead- 
fast friends of his obscure youth, and the mountains of 
East Tennessee with their blooming laurel and moon- 
glittering tumbling streams proudly stand guard 
in majestic silence over his and the graves of them 
all — those who fought for the South and those who 
laid down their lives for the North — and strangely 
enough, before death overtook him the party whom 
he had opposed, in its vindictive pursuit of political 
booty, hated him as they hated Davis, and thus at 
last the humble tailor and the aristocratic planter 
met on the same level. 



58 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Whatever hold that unfortunate clash with 
Johnson may have had on Davis' mind was quickly- 
broken by the United States declaring war on 
Mexico, and the arrival soon thereafter of a special 
messenger notifying him that he had been chosen 
Colonel of the First Mississippi Rifles, who had 
enlisted at once on the call for volunteers. 

Davis gladly accepted the Colonelcy, and after 
securing for his regiment the best arm of the day, 
the Whitney gun, set off for Vicksburg, pursuing 
his way by stage over the Alleghenies. June, with 
her sunshine dome, daisies, green leaves and gently 
drifting clouds was living her day of matchless 
charm. 

A family council including James Pemberton 
was held, at which it was decided that James should 
stay at home and look after the plantation and Mrs. 
Davis. That settled, Davis selected an Arabian 
from his stables, and with Jim Green, one of his 
brother's people for servant in Pemberton's place, 
set off to join his regiment in camp at New Orleans. 

Within a few days the regiment sailed and landed 
on a sandy beach not far from Point Isabel on the 
coast of Texas, where Davis at once began to drill 
his men and conduct schools of instruction for 
commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Sub- 
sequently they moved to Comargo on the Rio 
Grande, 
f While in camp some of his men raided a corn 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 59 

field, the ears in full silk offering a sweet change 
from the army ration of hard tack and bacon. 
Davis, on hearing of the wreck of the poor settler's 
field, was deeply provoked and at once assembled 
the men, rebuking them sharply for their conduct, 
admonishing them that war against an enemy did 
not allow the despoiling or destruction of private 
property, and warning them that henceforth any 
violation of this rule would meet with severe pun- 
ishment. The damages his men had done he paid 
out of his own pocket to the farmer. 

In this connection it may with propriety, we 
think, be recorded, that not a single article or 
trophy of any kind was brought home by the men 
of his regiment; moreover, all the venerable bejew- 
elled tinsels of churches and cathedrals were left 
Untouched, and we dare say that if these old-time 
revered objects of devotion with their strings of 
pearls, rubies and diamonds could speak, they 
would testify with subdued, fervent gratitude to 
this fact, at least so far as the First Mississippi 
Rifles were concerned. What a contrast to the 
conduct of some of our men in the Civil War and 
the Germans in the World War, lugging home 
family treasures, silverware, pictures, and what 
not! 

Surely Jefferson Davis' record in the Mexican 
War, so far as dealing with individual enemies and 
observing their rights was concerned, brought no 



60 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

shame to his country, and we believe that the old 
flag he followed in those days would declare with 
pride that it had no memory in its folds of a single 
act by him unbecoming a soldier and a gentle- 
man. 



CHAPTER VI 

In August General Taylor, to whom Davis had 
reported and by whom he had been received with 
heartiness, set his forces in motion for Monterey 
some hundred miles distant at a gap in the Mexican 
mountains. After four or five hot days' march 
through a desolation of sand, chaparral and bayonet 
cactus tha,t gave avvay at last to smihng fields and 
hills clothed in green, they reached the little town 
of Marin, and from one of its belfries they could 
see across an intervening, undulating valley some 
twenty-odd miles wide, the gilded crosses of the 
Cathedral of Monterey. 

The dreamy old town, with a population of ten 
or more thousand, and embowered with fig, lemon, 
orange and pomegranate trees, lay at the mouth of 
a pass through the Sierra Madres on the main 
road to the City of Mexico. Its streets were swept 
by artillery posted and protected by barricades 
where they crossed each other; and the square one- 
storied houses of solid masonry, with a court in 
the center and iron-barred windows, had flat roofs 
with parapets made of sand bags for infantry. On 
both sides of the pass above the town there were 
fieldworks, and fortified stone structures called 

61 



62 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

castles, flying the green, white and red banner of 
Mexico. In the suburbs, at the lower end of the 
town, were several small works, and a little farther 
along on the bank of the river was a large grove of 
pecan and live oaks into whose shade, after the 
capture, some of the weary storming troops retired 
with their riddled, victorious colors. Beyond the 
town limits in the north and standing alone, was a 
fort known as the Black Fort, with four salients 
providing for eight guns each, walls very strong and 
high surrounded by a deep ditch and enclosing two 
or more acres. 

After resting a few days they drew near to Mon- 
terey and Taylor sent George Gordon Meade, the 
hero of Gettysburg, who in figure, bearing and 
temperament was very like Davis, to conduct 
Worth with his division off to the right and attack 
the batteries and detached works guarding the 
pass through the mountains. This was on a Sunday 
forenoon and Worth and his soldiers could hear the 
bells of the Cathedral ringing for morning service, 
their soft tones wafting over the line of his march. 
He reached his position about twilight and went 
into bivouac. 

The next morning, to make a diversion in favor 
of Worth who had attacked with valor at an early 
hour, Garland's Brigade, chiefly of Regulars and 
the "Washington and Baltimore Battalions of Militia, 
and very gallant men they were, assailed the lower 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 63 

end of the town. Garland soon came under a heavy 
artillerj^ fire from works not only directly in his 
front, but also on his right and rear from Black 
Fort, and on his left from Fort Taneria. He was 
repulsed with a death toll that was heavy, and 
among the dead were the grandsons of two of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, showing 
that their forefathers' courageous blood was still 
running. 

Quitman, commanding Davis' brigade was then 
ordered up and the First Mississippi Rifles and the 
First Tennessee attacked Fort Taneria. After suf- 
fering much from artillery and musketry fire, they 
stormed and broke through, Davis abreas^ in going 
over the works and in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. 
On reaching the gate of a fortified building they 
forced it open and its commanding officer surrendered 
his sword to Davis. 

Meanwhile Butler's division had gone to the 
support of Garland and met with like fortune, 
whereupon the Mexican cavalry massed behind the 
Black Fort hurried out to charge the broken infantry. 
Davis who had been sent to Butler's aid, arrived 
just in time to take position as a rear guard for the 
broken battalions, and seeing the oncoming cavalry, 
faced his regiment about and advanced against 
them. In the engagement that followed, he repulsed 
the cavalry, saving the lives of many of our limping, 
bleeding wounded. Albert Sidney Johnston in talking 



64 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

with his son long after Monterey, gave Davis the 
highest praise for his conduct. 

The next day and the next the American forces 
renewed the attack, fighting from house to house, 
and from all accounts Davis showed great personal 
bravery. One circumstance is worthy of mention: 
a young Mexican officer was urging his men on 
with much gafiantry when one of Davis' men levelled 
his rifle on him. Davis exclaimed, "Do not shoot 
him!" The brave fellow's fife was spared. 

The next morning the Mexican general Ampudia, 
of French descent and born in the West Indies, 
asked for terms of surrender. Taylor having selected 
Davis for one of the Commissioners to carry out 
the terms of surrender, named an hour and place 
for a conference. An officer who accompanied 
Davis to the meeting says that Ampudia was in 
full uniform, all courtesy, big speeches, abundance 
of shrugs, nods, alternate smiles and frowns, in 
short, manifesting the whole gamut of intercourse 
conmion to Frenchmen. Taylor, on the contrary, 
was dumb, dressed in his best coat that looked as 
though it had been through a dozen campaigns, a 
glazed oil-cloth cap, an old-fashioned white vest and 
had the appearance of an aged farmer elected to a 
military command. When Ampudia had got through 
boasting about the number of troops he had and 
how he and they would die in their tracks, etc., 
Taylor cocked his head a little to one side and, gently 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 65 

raising his grizzly eyebrows so that the dauntless 
little black eyes lurking beneath them might fall 
directly upon the animated Mexican, said coolly: 
''General Ampudia, we came here to take Monterey, 
and we are going to do it on such terms as please 
us. I wish you good morning," and off he went 
leaving Davis and his colleagues to settle the terms. 
In the end Davis wrote them and they were gen- 
erous, too generous, as it turned out, to suit the 
politicians in Washington, and Taylor was ordered 
to revoke them; but owing to the long distance 
the messenger had to travel they had about expired 
before his arrival. Taylor, very naturally was 
indignant, and felt he had been dealt with unfairly; 
thereupon Davis came to his defense and his 
colleagues joined with him. 

Mrs. Davis unwell, and affairs on the plantation 
— although James had done his best — unsatisfactory 
and worrying, the Colonel got a leave of absence 
and went home, taking with him his war horse Tartar 
which had shown intelligence and spirit under fire. 

Before returning to the Army, Davis made his 
will, and consulted James whom he wished to set free, 
as to its provisions in case of his death. James 
said that he would prefer to take care of Mrs. Davis 
while she lived, but wanted his freedom at the end 
of her hfe, and the will was so framed with a bequest 
of land or money as he might choose. 
I On the expiration of his leave of absence he left 



66 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Tartar and took Richard, a bay with black points, 
and rejoined the Army. The battle of Buena Vista 
was fought shortly after his retui-n, a battle against 
vastly superior numbers, and every history of that 
engagement will tell you Davis with his Mississippi 
Rifles did as much if not more -, to win that great 
victory than any other single command, although 
there was conspicuous fortitude and bravery dis- 
played by regulars and volunteers on all parts of 
the bitterly contested field. 

Early in the action he was wounded seriously in 
the right foot just below the instep, the ball driving 
a part of his spur and stocking into the wound, 
but he did not leave the field till it was won. His 
boot had to be cut from his foot and all that night 
a friend. Captain Eustis, kept a stream of cold 
water pouring over the wound. The next morning 
when it was rumored that the enemy was about to 
renew the battle, Davis ordered that he be carried 
out to the head of his regiment, but dm-ing the 
night the enemy drew away silently; for two years 
Davis was on crutches, the bone of his foot exfoliating 
from time to time. 

Many, many gallant men fell at Buena Vista 
and among them Hardin, McKee and Clay, a son 
and namesake of the great patriot Heniy Clay. 
He had been a year at West Point with Davis and 
when the latter first met his father in Washington, 
on reentering Congress, Clay said: ''My poor boy 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 67 

usually occupied about one-half of his letters home 
in praising you." 

Taylor in his official report said: ''The Mississippi 
Rifles under Colonel Davis were highly conspicuous 
for their gallantry and steadiness. Brought into 
action against an immense, superior force, they 
maintained themselves for a long time unsupported. 
Colonel Davis, though severely wounded, remained 
in the saddle until the close of the action." 

Davis' regiment's term of service having expired 
and the time having come for its departure, he 
drew it up in front of General Taylor to say good-bye. 
The old General exclaimed almost choked with 
emotion, ''Go on boys — go on — I can't speak." 

On its arrival at New Orleans it received a great 
welcome, and there were many manifestations of 
joy and pride as the boat made its way up the 
river to Vicksburg and home. 

Davis had hardly reached his plantation when, 
owing to the death of a senator from Mississippi, 
the Governor, Albert Gallatin Brown, appointed 
him to fill the vacancy and on crutches in December, 
pale and emaciated, he took his seat in the Senate, 



CHAPTER VII 

Although the Mexican War was over, and over 
victoriously, when Davis entered the Senate, yet 
the storm of passion aroused by it had not died 
down, so deeply enraged were the foes of slavery, 
who, day in and day out, continued to denounce 
it as a war, not waged in the defense of the country's 
honor or rights, but for the conquest of new terri- 
tory for the extension of slavery. So, when Webster 
in discussing a bill for the increase of the regular 
army declared it was an odious war, this epithet 
brought Davis to his feet, and naturally enough, 
for did not the crutches at his side call on him to 
resent the imputation? 

''Odious for what?" he asked — and we see the 
blaze in his blue-gray eyes and we hear his melodious 
voice keyed with impelling fervor — ''Is it odious 
on account of the skill and gallantry with which it 
has been conducted, or because of the humanity, 
the morality, the magnanimous clemency which 
have marked its execution? Where is the odium? 
Where are the evils brought upon us by this ' odious ' 
war? Where can you point to any inroad upon our 
prosperity, public or private, industrial, com- 
mercial or financial which, in any degree, can be 
attributed to the prosecution of this war?" 

68 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 69 

While this warm, offhand reply did not go to 
the root of the matter as it lay in Webster's mind, 
yet having participated in that war, forbidden 
* plundering and having written the generous terms 
for the capitulation of Monterey, it would have 
been pusillanimous in Davis to have sat there and 
kept his silence. 

Relative to slavery during that and subsequent 
sessions, he said in defence of the South that it 
had inherited and not instituted slavery, that it 
had recognition in the voice of the Constitution 
itself as an element in society and the nation's 
political body, that its extension into the territories 
did not add a single soul to its numbers; that during 
its existence in the South the slaves had risen to a 
higher level in intelHgence than elsewhere in the 
world, and that between them and their masters 
had grown home ties of affection independent of 
color; that the mere fact of ownership neither 
established inhumanity, obliterated a single one of 
the native feelings, debauched the standard of 
good citizenship or loyalty to the Republic's ideals 
in the owner of slaves in the South any more than 
it did in the holder of slaves while slavery existed 
in New England and New York. He recognized 
and regretted that the antithetical use of the terms 
freedom and slavery as apphed to parties had had 
a powerful influence in forming the adverse opinion 
of the world — for the word '^ freedom" was sweet 



70 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and "slavery" repugnant — as against any claim 
the South might make for its rights under the Con- 
stitution, or measures for its safety of life or property 
from insurrection. To the last he held that, to 
whatever extent the question of slavery may have 
served as the occasion, it was really not the heart 
of the conflict between the Confederacy and the 
Federal Government. 

In this connection we will venture to observe, that 
whosoever delves into the history of those bygone 
days so inflamed with bitterness of speech will 
discover neither bluster nor intemperate language 
by Mr. Davis in stating or defending his views on 
slavery, State Rights and public policy, or a single 
failure to treat his opponents with the utmost 
courtesy. We are quite sure, also, he will find no 
instance when Davis descended to the level of the 
demagogue; for, if ever a public man's Ufe was built 
up around sincerity, that of Jefferson Davis can lay 
claim to the tribute. 

During this same tempestuous session, what is 
known as the Clay Compromise between North and 
South on the question of slavery was passed. Davis 
spoke against it, voted against it, and we think he 
was wrong. But he claimed that it practically 
denied the South its rights and, by its prohibition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia, it virtually 
committed the Government to the assumption of 
power to destroy slavery whenever it saw fit. If it 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 71 

could so deal with that wrong, it could and would 
deal with whatsoever might be called thereafter a 
national wrong. We think, in view of the power 
the Government now exercises over the property as 
well as the habits of its citizens, he not only had 
logic on his side but prophecy also with her fulfilling 
eye. But if I had to choose in behalf of mankind 
between emotion that stirred Clay's heart and 
logic that ruled Davis, for a guide to the field of 
progress and great deeds, I should choose emotion. 

Let all this be as it may, there was an incident 
during the heated debate which is worth recording. 
Near the end of the discussion during which the 
venerable Union-loving Clay had made heart-reach- 
ing, eloquent appeals in favor of the measure, he 
turned toward Davis and said, ''Allow me to say 
to the Senators from the South and to my friend 
from Mississippi, if he will allow me to apply that 
expression to him, which I do with most profound 
truth and sincerity, for he is not only my friend, 
but he was also the friend of one who is no more." 
Overcome by emotion. Clay could not speak and 
bowing his head, whitened with the snow of age, 
his eyes were seen to fill with tears; after regaining 
control he went on. 

When Davis secured the floor some hours later, 
early in his speech he said: ''I did not, however," 
referring to some phase in the debate, "intend to 
arraign in an offensive sense the consistency of my 



72 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

friend from Kentucky, as I am permitted to call 
him. I not only accepted the appellation when he 
applied it to me, I accepted it gratefully and I felt 
the remarks which came from him in a suppressed 
voice more deeply than I can express. Between us 
there is a tie of old memories, an association running 
back to boyhood days, near and dear, and conse- 
crated so that death alone can ever sever it. It is 
one which he well knows and I can never forget." 

Critics! condemners of Jefferson Davis, may I 
ask you to read this scene over? There is much, you 
will agree, of our common human nature in it, much 
that moves that vibrating chord which binds us 
all, which tenderly binds you to me, reader. 

There was another event that summer after 
Congress adjourned, which we think throws some 
light on the kind of man Davis was, and which 
Carlisle says should be the main aim and endeavor 
of a biographer to discover. It was this: the Whigs 
nominated Taylor and the Democrats Lewis Cass 

— a patriot if ever there was one and a warm friend 
of Davis — for the presidency. He was now con- 
fronted by devotion to party on the one hand and 
by the ties that bound him to Taylor on the other 

— was not his first wife Taylor's daughter, and 
had he not shared with him the dangers of the 
battlefield, dangers that develop a tie that may grow 
old but never breaks — ? The outcome of his delib- 
eration was to remain loyal to his party's nominee, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 73 

but not to enter the campaign in his behalf. When, 
however, zealous Democrats attacked his old com- 
manding officer he came out boldly in his defense, 
showing that strong as was the hold of party on 
him stronger was that of justice and friendship. 

And now a word as to how he passed his time 
when not in the Senate. 

Mrs. Davis in her Memoirs says that he came home 
night after night tired out and then from dusk devoted 
himself to a late hour, and often to nearly daylight, 
getting ready for the next day's work; that his 
health, never robust since wounded in Mexico, so 
interfered with social duties that he took little or no 
part in the ga3"eties of society, although from time 
to time he would ask his very intimate political and 
old army friends to dine vvdth him. In my youth in 
the fxeld I met old officers who had been at his table, 
and, although they were fighting against him, they 
spoke of his graciQusness, naturaL charm, and how 
his face would Hght up radiantly with the spirit of 
comradeship. 

When Congress adjourned Davis went home, but 
not to quiet, for the people of Mississippi were in a 
political ferment, lining up for the election in Sep- 
tember of delegates to a convention called by the 
Legislature for the consideration of Federal rela- 
tions; in other words, to approve or disapprove of 
the Clay Compromise. While this canvass was 
going on the regular parties. Whig and Democrat, 



74 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

nominated candidates for Governor to be elected in 
November. The Whigs, who in the main approved 
the Compromise, had nominated Foote; and the 
Democrats, Quitman, who at heart, although born 
in the North, longed to break with it. 

Foote, with whom Davis had had a serious con- 
troversy in the Senate, ending with a mutual antip- 
athy that lasted as long as they lived, was an able 
man, but at times outrageous in his language in 
debate, entered upon the campaign with almost 
savage delight. From county seat to county seat 
he went haranguing, frequently challenging Davis to 
meet him, and excoriating Quitman unmercifully. 
The election of delegates in favor of the Compromise 
was an overwhelming victory for him and the Union 
party, chiefly Whigs. Quitman, whom Foote had 
literally slashed into shreds, withdrew in utter dis- 
gust and loathing from the contest for governor; 
thereupon the Democrats called upon Davis to lead 
their bewildered party. 

At that time he was confined to a darkened room, 
suffering with a diseased left eye that ultimately 
lost its sight entirely. However, he yielded to the 
call, resigned his Senatorship and, walking back and 
forth in his dark room, dictated his stand on the 
issues, declaring that he had never advocated the 
dissolution of the Union, that the time for secession 
had not come, and, if ever, then only as a last 
alternative, and as soon as he was able, set out to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 75 

make the best canvass he could in the few weeks 
that remained. 

The election went against him, but he reduced 
the majority of more than seven thousand that had 
been cast at the delegate election, to less than a 
thousand. That this defeat was a sore disappoint- 
ment we have no doubt; not only had he sacrificed a 
position of honor that he had craved and enjoyed, 
but had been defeated by a man he despised. His 
resignation of the Senatorship to go into this cam- 
paign had ill-starred issue in this, that, it identi- 
fied him thenceforth with the Southern radicals with 
whom he was not in full sympathy, and who were 
for dissolving the Union at once, he only as a last 
alternative. 

This step indicates his sense of political obligation 
to the party that had bestowed its honors upon 
him, a delicate fastidiousness of the proprieties of 
official life, and a keen oversensitiveness as to what 
touched his motives and policies, a trait in his 
character that is never found in dictators. From a 
worldly point of view, the Confederacy might have 
gained here and there an advantage had he been 
less sensitive, shrewder and more compliant; but, 
while nature in gathering his clay had been bountiful 
in her gifts to address the mind and put the torch 
to enthusiasm, she forgot — or disdained — to give 
him a faculty to deceive, to purr to the vanity of 
the mighty, or to greet with a factitious smile and 



76 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

familiarity the always ambitious and oftentimes 
vulgar politicians that pack the ranks of mediocritj^ 
In this connection as illustrative of the kind of man 
he was, on one occasion in the Senate, he said: ''I 
wish now merely to add that what my heart tells 
me is right, no casuistry can prevail upon me not to 
do, or to do that which I believe to be wrong." 

We have wondered, more than once, what the 
fate of the Confederacy would have been had it had 
a leader of a different type. Would it have suc- 
ceeded? we hear some one ask. 0, no! Entangled 
in slavery's inextricable net, it was doomed to 
defeat sooner or later let its leader have been the 
shrewdest of mortals. In view of its heroic life, 
although ill-starred, it was better, it was far better, 
we think, to have had a leader such as he was, a 
man with high standards of public and private life, 
a stainless character, a tongue gifted with eloquence 
and a heart of indomitable courage. Every nation 
at some period in its life furnishes material for 
drama and I am glad that in the life of the Con- 
federacy there is so much of a high, inspiring character. 

After the election he betook himself to the reju- 
venescence of his plantation which, due to his long 
absence and the death of the faithful James Pem- 
berton, had become unfruitful and begun to Avear 
the forlorn look of neglect. By his ever contagious 
spirit he quickly inspired new zeal in the gangs 
picking cotton and harvesting the crops, for it was 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 77 

autumn and they were ripe; and when not in the 
fields with the hands, devoted himself to the grounds 
about the house, for they, among all the accessories 
of an estate as we well know, are the first to show 
the decline of prosperity. 

His wife says they worked together looking after 
ornamental blooming shrubs, cultivating roses in 
the garden, of which he was very proud, and one 
day they planted a little live oak that thrived so 
well that when she wrote her book it spread a 
shade of over ninety feet. So passed those autumn 
days, the buoyant magnolia glorying in her bursting 
carmine seeds, the clustered purple asters and golden- 
rod in bloom, and the primeval woods basking in 
the dreamy Indian summer silence, days that in 
the eyes of the gray-haired wife, after the storm 
and wreck were over, lay like a lost Eden in the 
dreary past. 

Meanwhile Davis' friend, FrankHn Pierce of New 
Hampshire, had been elected President and one day 
there came a letter from him asking Davis to a place 
in his Cabinet. Mrs. Davis, dreading a change, 
entreated him not to accept, and he declined the 
honor. Pierce, sorely disappointed, for Davis had 
had a warm place in his heart for many a day, 
hoped he would at least come on to his inauguration. 
Davis, yielding as throughout his life to the pleas 
of lifelong friendships, went to Washington; Pierce 
renewed his request, backed earnestly by leaders of 



78 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the party, a call that always had something of the 
stir and rallying appeal of a bugle on a battlefield 
for him, for he was a strong party man, and Davis 
accepted the position of Secretary of War. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Of all the politically lordiy places in the Cabinet 
not one could have had for Davis the same inherent 
distinction or duties so agreeable as that of the 
Secretary of War. It gave him not only the oppor- 
tunity to render valuable services in behalf of the 
Nation's defence but also to enhance the welfare 
and efficiency of his boyhood's profession, the Army 
he loved. 

With his natural diligence and enthusiasm he 
threw himself into the performance of his duties. 
He urged and succeeded in increasing the Army's 
numbers and its pay; he replaced the old smooth- 
bore muskets by the best modern rifles; caused the 
revision of the tactics and Army regulations; strength- 
ened the seacoast defences and gave to Rodman, 
the father of all modern high-power cannon, every 
help and encouragement while carrying on his still 
fruit-bearing experiments. It was my fortune to 
serve with this truly distinguished officer during 
and after the war, and he never failed to speak of 
Davis' wide knowledge of every science, his readi- 
ness to listen, his uniform courtesy and charm of 
manner; and, while his office room in the War 
Department had an unmistakable atmosphere of 

79 



80 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

dignity, yet there was none of the usual chill and 
meticulous fussiness that pervade so many of our 
self-conscious military headquarters. 

Davis ordered suj"veys for transcontinental roads 
to facilitate the assemblage of troops on the Pacific 
coast, recommended the establishment of post 
schools, sent a commission to report on the conduct 
of the Crimean War and gave especial attention 
not only to the betterment of officers' quarters at 
West Point where Lee was superintendent, but also 
and above all established at the Academy a depart-' 
ment of ethics with, a view to extending and elevating 
the merely professional education into fields of 
philosophy, history and literature, thus giving an 
officer those intellectual acquirements befitting his 
position as a representative of his country. He 
tells us that he was led to this addition to the course 
of study by deficiencies he had felt in his associa- 
tion with men of wider university education. It was 
during his administration that Weir painted the 
picture over the chancel in the old chapel. On the 
left of the legend, '^ Righteousness exalteth a nation 
but Sin is a reproach to any people," stands a 
thoughtful Roman soldier, his hand resting on a 
stand of lictors, and on the right of the legend the 
figure of Peace with her heaven-lit face uplifted and 
in her hand an olive branch. In that picture is the 
sublimation of the ideals of the hero and noble 
warrior, the embodiment of the spirit of old West 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 81 

Point worshipping with the Cadets. A copy should 
occupy a like place over the chancel in the new 
chapel. 

No graduate, we are fain to believe, ever held his 
Alma Mater in deeper love than Jefferson Davis, 
whose wearied mind, when he lay on his last sick bed 
and death very near, winged its way back to her, and 
he said to his wife, to whom he was dictating his 
autobiography: ''I have not told what I wish to 
say of my classmates Sidney Johnston and Polk 
[the venerable bishop killed on Lone Mountain]; 
I have much m_ore to say about them. I shall tell 
a great deal of West Point, and I seem to remember 
more every day." Sweet, hke inflowing brooks from 
meadows green, are old memories, but let us return to 
the narrative's main channel. 

It had been custom^ary in those days of political 
spoils, upon a change of administration, to make 
removals of clerkships to satisfy party workers. 
Now it so happened that the Chief Clerk of the 
War Department who, by long experience, had 
peculiar qualifications, had been removed by Davis' 
predecessor, and although known to Davis officially 
only, he replaced him in his old position. Again, 
and illustrative of his ideas as to civil service, the 
Quartermaster-General needing a clerk sent him a 
list arranged according to his judgment as to merit; 
Davis gave the appointment to No. 1 ; within a few 
days a delegation of Democratic Congressmen called 



82 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

on him and wanted to know whether it was true 
that he had appointed a Whig to a position in the 
War Department. He rephed, "Certainly not." 
Whereupon, pleased at the brightening prospect, 
the delegation observed that they thought he had 
not been aware of it and proceeded to inform him 
that the clerk he had appointed was a Whig, etc. 

Davis listened to them patiently, and when they 
were through told them in his usual respectful 
tones and manner that they had been misinformed, 
that he had appointed not a Whig but a clerk, No. 1 
on a merit list that had been submitted by the 
head of the bureau; and, moreover, that while he 
was in office, merit and not politics would be his 
rule in all such cases. 

Of course this was not satisfactory to the Con- 
gressmen, but all high-minded men of today will 
agree that it was creditable to Davis. Here is what 
Carl Schurz in his Reminiscences has to say about 
him: 

''The first call I made was at the War Department, 
to present my letter of introduction to the Secretary, 
Mr. Jefferson Davis. Being respectful, even rever- 
ential, by natural disposition, I had in my imagina- 
tion formed a high idea of what a grand personage 
the War Minister of this great Republic must be. 
I was not disappointed. He received me graciously. 
His slender, tall, and erect figure, his spare face, 
keen eyes, and fine forehead, not broad, but high 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 83 

and well shaped, presented the well-known strong 
American type. There was in his bearing a dignity 
which seemed entirely natural and unaffected — 
that kind of dignity which does not invite familiar 
approach, but will not render one uneasy by lofty 
assumption. His courtesy was without any con- 
descending air. Our conversation confined itself to 
the conventional commonplace. A timid attempt on 
my part to elicit from him an opinion on the phase 
of the slavery question brought about by the intro- 
duction of the Nebraska Bill did not meet with 
the desired response. He simply hoped that every- 
thing would turn out for the best. Then he deftly 
resumed his polite inquiries about my experiences 
in America and my plans for the future, and expressed 
his good wishes. His conversation ran in easy, and, 
so far as I could judge, well-chosen and sometimes 
even elegant phrase, and the timbre of his voice 
had something peculiarly agreeable. A few years 
later I heard him deliver a speech in the Senate, 
and again I was struck by the dignity of his bearing, 
the grace of his diction, and the rare charm of his 
voice — things which greatly distinguished him 
from many of his colleagues." 

In contrast to this vivid sketch of the outer man, 
let me give one or two incidents while Secretary of 
War that reveal the inner man. 

One morning as he was about to sit down to 
breakfast, the doorbell rang and a young, careworn 



84 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

mother was ushered in with a crying baby and a 
yelHng boy, his hand clutched in hers. She was the 
wife of a private soldier and had come to appeal in 
his behalf from a court-martial sentence. Davis 
heard her story, had her accompany him to the 
breakfast room, placed a chair for her at the table 
and then led the boy to Mrs. Davis, saying: ''My 
little man, here is a lady who comforts crying boys." 

Breakfast over he went with the woman to the 
President and on her return sent a note to Mrs. 
Davis asking her to provide an early dinner, to 
give a dollar to each of the children, and the butler 
to take them to the train and buy them tickets 
home. Light must have been that poor woman's 
heart as she put her children in their beds that night, 
and so long as she lived deep and abiding, we are 
sure, was her gratitude. 

Again, there was a professional beggar, an old, 
disfigured woman who daily — winter and summer 
— would sit knitting stockings before the door of 
the War Department. Every day Davis would send 
the office messenger with a small sum of money to 
the old creature, and insisted that Mrs. Davis 
should provide her with a cushion. And by the 
way, the messenger (Patrick Jordan was his name), 
just before he died long after the war was over, 
asked his wife to return a gold pencil that Davis 
had given him. Mrs. Davis says in her Memoirs 
that her husband's eyes were misty as he read 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 85 

Patrick's widow's note accompanying the memento. 

Here is another incident we think worth recording : 
Lieut. Robert Ransom, later General Ransom of 
the Confederate Army, came to Washington for his 
wedding to an intimate acquaintance of the Davises, 
who a few days after his arrival gave a reception. 
WTien Ransom presented himself Davis remarked: 
''Young gentleman, I expected to have seen you 
before." Ransom turned to Mrs. Davis and said: 
"Madam, do you think that even the Secretary of 
War has a right to more than one visit from a fellow 
on leave of absence, who is here to marry his sweet- 
heart day after tomorrow, when she and I hope to 
see you and receive your congratulations?" Davis 
instantly replied, ''Go to your sweetheart and tell 
her, with my love, I am her friend and shall be to 
her husband if he be worthy of so noble a woman." 

Pierce's administration ended on the fourth of 
March, 1857, and at nine o'clock that day, Davis 
went to the White House and handed in his resigna- 
tion as Secretary of War, having been reelected 
Senator by his home State to the new Congress 
that was to meet at noon. On rising to bid farewell 
after a long interview, Pierce grasped his hand, 
saying: "I can scarcely bear the parting from you 
who have been strength and solace to me for four 
anxious years and never failed me." 



CHAPTER IX 

Upon reentrance into Congress Davis rose at 
once to a figure of marked national political promi- 
nence, for the Administration he had just left, and 
of which he was credited as the master mind, had 
approved the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, a bill that, by 
its virtual repeal of the venerable Missouri Com- 
promise, threw the Abolition Party into a convulsive 
frenzy, its leaders shouting from platform, press 
and pulpit that it meant a wicked, premeditated 
extension of slavery's curse, not only over territories 
dedicated to freedom, but all over the wide land, 
and with frowning brows and savage eyes singled 
out Davis as the evil genius of the Satanic measure; 
whereas, as a matter of fact, he had had nothing 
whatsoever to do with its conception. It was the 
child of Douglas, begotten by his eager ambition 
for party leadership and then the presidency. 

In magnitude of historic consequences that bill is 
without an equal in all passing Congress up to that 
time, or perhaps to this. I^ike a bombshell it startled 
the thousands upon thousands in the North who 
were reading with swimming eyes the fate of Uncle 
Tom in that epoch-making fiction ''Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," and rallied every hitherto latent opponent 

86 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 87 

of slavery to the active support of the new-born 
RepubUcan Party, which, under the mighty impulse 
of fervent recruits, marched, so to speak, with flying 
banners to the boundaries of the territories, south 
as well as north of the Missouri Compromise line, 
and proclaimed that slavery should not advance 
another step. That position it never abandoned, 
and the world has said it was right and wound its 
chaplets on the brows of its leaders. 

But what did it mean to the South? This, and 
this only: that notwithstanding their forefathers 
had marched to Cambridge to save Boston after 
Lexington — and by the way, this book is written 
within a look and a throw of the Old Elm where 
Washington took command, — had yielded to New 
England desire to extend the time for stopping the 
slave trade when framing the Constitution; had 
paid their full share of the burden imposed by the 
operations of the tariff to protect the products of 
Northern factories from foreign competition; had 
done their full part in the War of 1812 on land and sea; 
indeed, had practically alone defeated the British 
veterans at New Orleans and borne the brunt of the 
Mexican War; yet, and nevertheless, not one of 
them all should take his property in slaves with him 
into an adjacent territory to establish a new home; 
not one be allowed to take with him the old mammy 
who had rocked him in the cradle, or the old "uncle" 
who had carried him on his shoulder in childhood. 



8S JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and shown him how to make and set his traps for 
rabbits, partridges and wild pigeons; not one should 
go with him to his new home. What would domestic 
life be to him and his family v/ithout them? 

Again, and surely, was not his property in slaves 
recognized in the Constitution, and on the same 
legal footing as the horses and oxen of the Northern 
man when he came to the territorial line to start his 
new home, unless we say that its terms had lost 
their force and meaning? And lo, too, the significance 
of this decree! Would not submission to it be equiv- 
alent to a passive acknowledgment that henceforth 
he was not the equal of his fellow citizen in the 
enjoyment of express Constitutional rights? But, 
and above all, how long would it be, if his claim be 
denied to go into the adjacent territory with his 
property in slaves, before his right to hold them 
anywhere would be denied? 

Is there a Northern man of self-respect today who, 
had he been in the slaveholder's shoes, would not 
have resented, as the Southern man resented, the 
threatened humiliation in the eyes of the world? 
Would he not have said as a man of courage, such 
as I know my fellow Northern men to be, ''If you 
push to extremes this crusade against slavery, 
bound up as it is with our domestic and economic 
life, we shall have to take a stand, come weal, come 
woe!" 

Now that was Davis' position, as well as that of 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 89 

thousands of Union-loving slaveholders, in reference 
to the aforementioned contingency. That over 
that contingency hung a black cloud, carrying battle- 
fields strewn with dead bodies, some in blue and 
some in gray, cannot be gainsaid, for it has its living 
witnesses in the national cemeteries and soldiers' 
monuments, Union and Confederate, and its history 
in over fifty bulky volumes of war records bound in 
black. 

But we are not writing history, that is a rapid, 
impersonal chronicle of events; we are writing, or 
at least trying to write, a biography which is, if 
well done, the complete unfolding of what is called 
the inner life of a man; for without a clear insight 
into that inner life the writer may be in a Pilate's 
court and pleading for the release of a Barabbas. 

With this biographic aim in view then, we have 
touched upon one of the tributaries of the main 
stream of political events that had carried Davis 
into his position, the denial of what he and his 
fellow Southerners believed to be natural and in 
law fundamental Constitutional rights; let us go 
now to the source of another tributary of that main 
stream, the States Rights Party, with which at that 
time he was more or less identified. 

As early as 1834 John Quincy Adams, in his diary 
of August 29, gives the substance of an interviev/ in 
Washington which the editor of the Charleston 
Courier had sought with him. In the course of their 



90 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

talk the editor alluded to the apprehension, always 
prevailing in the South, that the Northern people 
''had a perpetual propensity to promote the abolition 
of slavery." 

''That ghost," says Adams, when with pen in 
hand he bent over his diary, "I believe will haunt 
them till they bring it up in reality. I said I had no 
longer the confidence in the duration of the Union 
that I once had, but did not say why," and with 
this cryptic remark closed the record of the day. 

That haunting ghost was never laid; night after 
night thenceforth it rapped on the door till it devel- 
oped a permanently morbid state of mind relative 
to the abolition movement against slavery. Under 
its influence Southern radicals, after Clay's Com- 
promise of 1850, following the example of Northern 
radicals, each faction steeped with long-harbored 
hate and scorn for the other, revived the doctrine 
of States Rights which Northern radicals had made 
use of in the Hartford Convention of 1814 threaten- 
ing withdrawal from the Union. Through the 
increasing ill-feeling due to the discussion of slavery 
and its contagious infection, the States Rights Party 
grew in numbers and in the end played the part in 
the South which the Abolitionists played in the 
North; both in their turn becoming the paramount 
force in determining the ultimate spirit of their 
respective sections. 

At the time we are dealing with — Davis' 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 91 

reentrance into Congress — the Democratic Party 
in the South was drifting toward the perilous beach 
of secession, and he with it, a beUever as he was 
from his youth up in the sovereignty of the States 
and their justification, under certain conditions of 
humiUation breeding insurrection to reassert that 
sovereignty. So then, on one of those preordained 
tides in the hfe of nations, Jefferson Davis drifted 
with the South, just as Abraham Lincoln drifted 
with the North, for when he was in Congress, 1847, 
and sixteen or seventeen years after that reputed 
remark of his upon witnessing a slave auction in 
New Orleans, which more than one of his biogra- 
phers have dwelt upon with satisfaction, ''By God, 
boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance 
to hit that thing (meaning slavery) I'll hit it hard," 
he offered a bill whose fifth section was in these 
words : 

"That the municipal authorities of Washington 
and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdic- 
tional limits, are hereby empowered and required to 
provide active and efficient means to arrest and 
deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping 
into said district." Washington at that very time 
had a public slave-auction room, with its weekly 
heart-breaking spectacles. When Lincoln offered 
that bill so in contrast with the well-known work of 
art in which he is depicted breaking the chains of a 
slave, the life of the Union was threatened, he was 



92 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

willing to return the fugitives to their owners for 
the Union's sake, to which he was tied as Davis and 
thousands of fellow Southerners were tied, by a 
reverential memory of the days when their forefathers 
made such a heavy sacrifice to found it; but on the 
current of events he drifted, drifted from that slave- 
capturing bill to the Emancipation Proclamation at 
last, and then to fame immortal. The incident 
only proves that he was human and not ''that 
faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw." In 
the glaring light of circumstances like these, so 
inconsistent with subsequent events illumined for 
all time, whose voice shall we listen to in judging 
the careers of the personages of those days? To me 
the sweetest, and we think in the long run the wisest, 
is that of charity. 



CHAPTER X 

Some time in the early winter of 1858, Davis fell 
seriously ill with laryngitis, not only losing his speech 
so that he had to make known his wants in writing, 
but also his left eye, that had never fully recovered 
its strength from a previous attack, became so 
inflamed, swollen and at last totally blind that he 
could not endure any light whatsoever in the room. 
His affliction was long, painful and debilitating, yet 
not without some compensation, for as in the wake 
of devastating forest fires the willow-herb appears 
and blooms, so sympathies and delicate attentions 
from old friends decked the track of his sickness; 
and no one was more devoted and spontaneously 
kindly than Seward, his great political antagonist, 
who almost daily would go and sit by his bedside, 
telling him what was going on in the Senate. 

On one of these Good Samaritan visits the haunt- 
ing slavery question came drifting along on the 
current of their gossipy, informal talk. Mrs. Davis 
asked the visitor in view of his seeing slavery as it 
actually was while an instructor at an academy in 
Georgia, how he could make such piteous appeals 
for the negro and believe all he said in the debates. 
''I do not," he answered good-naturedly, ''but these 

93 



94 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

appeals, as you call them, are potent to affect the 
rank and file of the North." Davis, surprised by 
Seward's remark, asked with gravity, "But, Mr, 
Seward, do you never speak from conviction alone?" 

''Never!" he responded emphatically; whereupon 
Davis raised his blindfolded head and whispered, 
"As God is my judge, I never spoke from any other 
motive." Seward put his arm about him and gently 
laid him down, saying, "I know you do not. I am 
always sure of it." 

This happening is full of light; favorable indeed 
for Davis, and most illuminating as to the character 
of Seward, whose whole subsequent career shows 
that he had uttered an absolute truth. 

On its face, however, that was the speech of a 
charlatan; but he was not a charlatan, he was a 
gifted, long-foreseeing, practical statesman, whose 
life's aim was to enhance the welfare and the glory 
of the country he adored. For this end he was ready 
to make factitious appeals when dealing with the 
incubus of slavery, ready to use duplicity with the 
Commissioners of the vSouth as to the evacuation of 
Fort Sumter, to bid defiance to Great Britain and 
France over the recognition of the Confederacy in 
the darkest hours, and at last, and notwithstanding 
his attempted assassination by a Southern sympa- 
thizer, to plead in behalf of the defeated, forlorn 
and helpless South against the vindictive revenge 
of the radicals of his own party. Truly, truly, like 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 95 

a great scarred battleship that had sent her boats 
to a sinking enemy, he came into port grandly. 
Moreover there was a grain of poetry in his nature, 
for it was he who suggested to Lincoln that beautiful 
and touching paragraph, ending so well his first 
inaugural and gleaming its entrance into the company 
of great State papers. 

Davis had another friend, the famous Gen. Edwin 
V. Sumner, who in the war commanded the Second 
Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and whom the 
fields of Virginia and Maryland remember right 
well, who during Davis' illness used to visit him in 
the darkened room and talk with him by the hour 
over bygone days, engagements with the Indians, 
frontier experiences, and all that army gossip that 
has wiled away so many an hour for the soldier in 
peace and war. 

But the most interesting thing was this: Sumner 
had come on to Washington seeking satisfaction for 
a discourtesy and affront from Colonel Harney, 
and had sent him a challenge through his friend 
Colonel Hardie. When Davis heard the story he 
whispered to Sumner, ''You do not want to fight, 
of course, but have the matter explained and the 
wrong acknowledged." 

"Well, I do not know about that," responded the 
old warrior, ''I rather think I prefer fighting," but 
his and Harney's seconds smoothed out the trouble 
and laid away the pistols. Let the war rage as it 



96 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

might, defeat come with calumny and imprisonment, 
yet the ties that bound Davis to the old soldier 
who sat by his bedside and officers who fought 
against him never broke and were still green when 
death overtook him. 

The last of June, when able to travel, Davis, with 
his family of Uttle children, took a steamer at 
Baltimore, sailed down the Chesapeake and around 
Fort Monroe, where a few years later he languished 
so long, and thence out to sea for Portland, Maine, 
— drawn thither by the cool, refreshing breezes 
that come in off the sea and play among the beau- 
tiful, wooded islands of Casco Bay — and to be 
once more with a West Point friend who was spend- 
ing the summer there, Dallas Bache, then at the 
head of the Coast Survey, and who had the grati- 
tude of every ship's captain of that day for the 
lighthouses he had built and the harbors he had 
charted. 

Davis met many well-bred and well-known people, 
and made many, many friends that summer; when it 
was over he started in October for home, but the 
day he reached Boston one of the children was 
stricken with membranous croup and came near 
dying. 

Much to the comfort of Davis and his wife, Mrs. 
Harrison Gray Otis, whose fame, like venerable hlac, 
still blooms in the antique garden of Boston's aris- 
tocracy, went to their hotel, (the Tremont House, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 97 

overlooking the Granary Burial Ground, the grave 
of Sam Adams beneath its windows), and did a 
nurse's part all the night long, a kindness the 
Davises never forgot, and a perfect example of the 
many charming surprises in the Puritan character. 
During the child's convalescence Davis, at the 
request of a committee of leading Democrats headed 
by Caleb Gushing, his fellow member in Pierce's 
Cabinet, made an address in Faneuil Hall. The main 
body, the galleries, and the aisles of that famous 
hall were packed. Davis was at his best, he felt the 
spirit and heard the voice that abides there, and a 
better, a fairer, a more thoughtful or earnest speech 
he never made. He discussed the issues then engag- 
ing the aroused attention of the country, abandoned 
no ground he had ever taken as to the Constitutional 
rights of the South, used no epithets or disrespectful 
language against the Abolitionists, notwithstanding 
their almost personal enmity since the Pierce admin- 
istration, and closed with a glowing, solemn appeal 
that the old ties which had bound the colonies in 
their days of trial be not broken. And now, as from 
time to time while writing this book, I pass the grave 
of Sam Adams and his fellow-revolutionary patriots 
in the Granary Burial Ground on which the windows 
of the Tremont House then looked down, it is 
never without a feeling that the memories they 
evoked swept as with a spectral hand the chords of 
his love for the Union as he spoke in Faneuil Hall. 



98 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

He was the last great slaveholder that ever stood 
on that historic platform and talked out of his 
heart to the people of Boston; I am fain to believe 
he left on his audience an impression that was 
favorable; in bearing and language he had shown he 
was a gentleman, one, moreover, who had stood the 
gentleman's final test — the dangers of a battle- 
field; and we are inclined to think, too, that as they 
listened to his engaging, cultivated voice filled with 
strength, respect and candor, he seemed to them a 
worthy representative of the Southern men who had 
stood by their gallant forefathers — the Adamses, 
Sam and John, Knox, Hancock, Greene and Lincoln. 



CHAPTER XI 

The next three years, 1858 to 1861, of Davis' 
life and that of his fellow-countrymen, South and 
North, were momentous for him and them, and we 
are convinced that no one can read the newspapers, 
the diaries, or the speeches in Congress of those 
years without realizing that our country was 
approaching the brink of a volcano. In those three 
years there were three events which stand out, 
towering above all others and throwing long, dark 
shadows. 

The first of these was the effort on the part of 
some declamatory Southerners, like Spratt of South 
Carolina, and Yancey of Alabama, to re-open the 
slave trade. This wicked movement, advocated by 
a few and condemned by the bulk of the people in 
the South, not only did the South more discredit 
than any act in all its history, but also had most 
fateful results: for the Abolitionist conscience, 
already in a state of chronic feverishness, now 
became furious, and turned away from the path of 
sympathy to that of hate and its fellow companion, 
revenge. 

The newspapers of those days are full of evidence 
that slavery as a question of morals was turning 

99 



100 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

fast into one that encouraged violence for its extermi- 
nation. Here is an example, one of hundreds that 
might be given in proof of this raving state of mind. 
It is from a pamphlet circulated in Northern Ohio 
and New England. "Our plan is to land miUtary 
forces in the Southern States, who shall raise the 
standard of freedom and call the slaves to it and such 
free persons as may be willing to join it. Our plan 
is to make war openly or secretly, as circumstances 
may dictate, upon the property of the slaveholders 
and their abettors, not for its destruction, if that 
can be easily avoided, but to convert it to the use 
of the slaves. If it cannot thus be converted, we 
advise its destruction. Teach the slaves to burn 
their masters' buildings, to kill the cattle and hogs, 
to conceal and destroy farming utensils, to abandon 
labor in seedtime and harvest, and let the crops 
perish. To make slaveholders objects of derision 
and contempt by flogging them whenever they shall 
be guilty of flogging their slaves." 

Is it any wonder that, with a state of mind so seeth- 
ing with madness as this, John Brown should attempt 
what he did — the seizure of the United States 
Arsenal at Harper's Ferry — having in view to put 
its arms into the hands of the slaves whom he 
counted on joining him? 

Up to that time no event since the Nat Turner 
Insurrection so startled the South from one end to 
the other. I was at West Point in those days, and 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 101 

James B. Washington, whose father was a nephew of 
George Washington, captured by Brown, was a 
fellow cadet with me, and I know how the event 
was interpreted by every Southern man in the Corps. 

It is true that the bulk of the RepubUcan Party, 
with whom the original Abohtionists were mainly 
incorporated, disclaimed, and with deep sincerity/ 
this act by Brown. But their disclaimers, however 
sincere, were impugned by the fact that on the day 
of his funeral streets and houses in New England 
were draped in mourning, dirges were sung, and bells 
were tolled. 

Reader, put yourself in the shoes of a Southern 
man, with or without slaves. Would not those 
draped streets, dirges and tolling bells have been 
ominous to you? Would they not have indicated, as 
the rattle of a rattlesnake, that there was danger 
near? For could any sane man fail to conclude that 
manifestation, so solemn in its kind, was indicative 
of deep-seated passion, one that even the horrors of 
insurrection could not put under restraint. 

Davis in an offhand speech characterized the 
John Brown raid as an ''invasion of a state by a 
murderous gang of Abolitionists, one that might 
have had its germ in the doctrine of an irrepressible 
conflict between freedom and slavery," and, refer- 
ring to a remark by a Southerner as to the want of 
sympathy on the part of the North, he exclaimed: 
"I have not asked for any sympathy. Sympathy, 



m 



102 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

however, is the character of fraternity, sympathy is 
the nature of abhorrence of crime; sympathy in an 
odious shuddering at the spectacle of those who 
came to incite slaves to murder helpless women and 
children I might have expected in the breast of every 
gentlenian." 

This exclamation is so manifestly full of suppressed 
feehng it may perchance be interesting for the reader 
to see him as others saw him. A little while before 
the raid, Greely, in an editorial in the New York Trib- 
une of August 8, said: "Mr. Davis is unquestionably 
the foremost man of the South at the present day. 
Every Northern Senator will admit that from the 
Southern side of the floor the most formidable 
adversary to meet in debate is the thin, pale, pol- 
ished, intellectual-looking Mississippian with the 
unimpassioned demeanor, the habitual courtesy and 
the occasional unintentional arrogance which reveals 
his consciousness of great commanding power. It 
is a mistake to confound him with declaimers like 
Keith or with vulgar brawlers like Brown, his Sena- 
torial colleague, or with mere scheming politicians 
hke Greene [of Kentucky], Chngman [of North 
Carohna], Slidell and Benjamin [of Louisiana]. 
He belongs to a higher grade of public men in whom 
formerly the slave-holding democracy was prolific." 

Greely had been in Congress with Davis, and I 
think his description is the most vivid and his esti- 
mate probably the truest that ever was made of him. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 103 

As a supplement to what Greely said of him we 
will let the following extract from a speech he made 
shortly after Greely's editorial speak for itself. 

"And in this connection [referring to Senator 
Wilson of Massachusetts, with whom he had been 
discussing earnestly] it is but proper I should say 
that, if yesterday there was anything in my language 
or my manner which personally reflected on that 
Senator, it was not so designed. I am aware that I 
am very apt to be earnest, perhaps some would say 
excited, when I am speaking, and it is due to myself 
that I should say now, once for all, that I do not 
intend ever to offer discourtesy to any gentleman. 
By no indirection, by no equivocal expression, do I 
ever seek to injure the feelings of any one." 

The next precursory event in his life was the split 
of the Democratic Party at Charleston in April, 
1860, resulting in four candidates in the field for the 
presidency. Lincoln at the head of the Republican 
Party, confined almost entirely to the Northern 
States, Breckinridge practically to the South, 
Douglas to the Democratic Party of the North, and 
Bell to the old-line Union-loving Whigs, South and 
North. 

Davis has much, very much of the blame to carry 
for this split in the party; had his opposition to 
Douglas not been so vehement he would have been 
nominated and stood a fair chance to beat Lincoln. 
But as we see things now in their true perspective, 



104 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the war between the sections would have been post- 
poned for another four years only, at most. Deal 
with this and that pohtical phase of those times as 
we may, lay blame here and blame there, on the 
leaders North and South, yet after all there was 
no escape from the bloody conflict; our country's 
destiny was on her appointed way to future glories, 
and battlefields she had to cross. The gist of the 
platforms was as follows: 

The Republican: '^ Slavery can exist only by 
virtue of municipal law;" that there was no law for 
it in the Territories and no power to enact one, that 
Congress was ''bound to prohibit it in, or exclude 
it from, any and every Federal Territory," and that 
it was the right and duty of Congress to prohibit 
"these twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and 
slavery" in the Territories. 

The Douglas Party affirmed ''the right of the 
Territories in their territorial condition to determine 
their own organic institutions," denying the power 
or the duty of Congress to protect the persons or 
property of individuals or minorities in such Terri- 
tories against the action of majorities; in other 
words, they were to allow or disallow slavery as 
they saw fit. 

The Breckinridge Party claimed that the Terri- 
tories were open for settlement to citizens of all the 
States without inequality or discrimination; that is, 
a slaveholder could take his slaves with him and 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 105 

on the same footing as the citizen whose property- 
was in horses, or oxen and household furniture; 
but on emerging from a Territorial government to 
a State, the people could then determine whether 
slavery should or should not exist. 

The Bell Party ignored the territorial controversy 
altogether, making a single declaration of adherence 
to "the Constitution, the Union, and enforcement of 
the laws"; that is, the Fugitive Slave Law, which 
at that very time States of the North had set at 
defiance by imposing imprisonment and fine on any 
of their citizens who might try to enforce it. 

During the campaign Democratic friends of Davis 
requested him to interview Bell, Breckinridge and 
Douglas, and urge them to withdraw in favor of 
some one on whom all could unite, for it was obvious 
that, with three candidates in the field, Lincoln was 
sure to be elected. In compliance with this request 
Davis went to see Bell and Breckinridge, who were 
ready to retire, but Douglas said it was too late, 
that in case he withdrew many of his supporters 
would go to Lincoln, and there the matter dropped. 

Here let me say that Douglas has never been given 
the meed of praise he deserved; notwithstanding the 
Republicans had lit his way from Washington to 
Chicago by burning effigies of him, he stood by 
Lincoln after he was elected, thereby rallying 
Northern Democrats to his side by hundreds of 
thousands. But they rendered a great service, in a 



106 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

moral sense a greater service than that, inasmuch 
as after the war was over they were the first to hold 
out their hands to the South and renew the old ties, 
winning thereby that victory for peace which Milton 
had in mind. 

The voting at that election, the most historic in 
our annals, may be to others what it is to me 
— full of interest. 

Number of Votes Cast for Candidates 

South North Total 

Lincoln 26,430 1,840,022 1,866,452 

Douglas \^163,575 1,213,382 1,376,957 

Bell ^515,973 72,906 588,879 

Breckinridge / 570,951 278,830 849,701 

Analysis of this tabulation shows that, exclusive 
of Lincoln's vote, there were 679,548 voters in the 
South who were not in sympathy with the Keiths, 
Rhetts, Wigfalls, Slidells and Yanceys, contradicting 
so many of our historians who, through oversight, 
ignorance or intent, have left the impression in some 
of our school books of an almost universal lust for 
disunion and war on the part of the South. And 
these same historians — is it unfair to say consciously 
or unconsciously — harboring the spirit of vengeance, 
attributed to Davis the desires that animated the 
Rhetts, Wigfalls, Slidells and Yanceys; in fact, that 
he was the prime mover and leader for war and 
disunion; a charge which I trust the narrative in 
its course will demonstrate was as unfounded as it 
was unjust. 



CHAPTER XII 

Mr. Lincoln's election was celebrated with great 
rejoicing, but its bonfires had barely died out before 
a deep silence settled all over the land, such as pre- 
vails at sea before the rush of a tornado. In that 
silence men of character and heads of families. North 
and South, were thinking deeply over what had 
happened. The doctrine of the irrepressible conflict 
had been obviously approved and had carried the 
day. The victory had been complete, the forces 
that had won it had been inspired by the sins of 
slavery. 

And now what? Would the party that had 
triumphed lay down its oars, so to speak, and bask 
in the sunhght of political power, or would the 
irrepressible conflict go on? On the other hand, 
would the South carry out its repeated threats to 
secede if a party were elected pledged to confine 
and gradually smother the life out of slavery. 

These were the ghost-like questions that would 
not down, and drove sleep away from many a pillow. 
My roommate at West Point, from Georgia, night 
after night would lie in bed execrating Southern 
fire-eaters and Abolitionists. His state of mind was 
a fair type of thousands South and North. Sweet, 

107 



108 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sweet was his nature! And no youth followed the 
Confederate flag with more manliness, higher ideals 
or courage than John Asbury West of Madison, 
Georgia. His memory is dear to me. Meanwhile, 
conservative leaders of the RepubHcan Party, reflect- 
ing on the situation and appreciating their responsi- 
bility, cast about for measures that would benumb 
their victory and forestall peace-breaking move- 
ments, when lo, South Carohna, the infatuated 
mother of secession, called a convention on Novem- 
ber 26 to take the legal steps for withdrawal from 
the Union. 

Like a fire through their dead canebrakes, this 
madness of South Carolina went sweeping over the 
Gulf States. The Border States, however, under 
the lead of Old Virginia, wearing the mantle of 
sovereignty, stood firm, yet in painful anxiety. 
Through slavery they were bound to the Gulf, but 
the graves of Washington, Jefferson, Marshall and 
Madison were pleading that the ties of the Union 
be not broken. 

It has always seemed to me that the ties which 
bound the South to the Union were wound a little 
closer around the heart than in New England. It 
may have been a mere matter of temperament, but 
an agricultural people, alone with their woods and 
willow-bordered streams, have far deeper and keener 
feelings than the huddled workers in noisy mills. 
You can sing following a plough, at the end of a 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 109 

long furrow while the horses are resting, you can look 
on the floating, bulging clouds, can hear the bob- 
white whistle and the bluebird warble, but you 
cannot take your eyes off a clattering loom, lathe 
or boot-sewing machine; nor from the doorstep of 
your mill-owned tenement, when the day is done, 
look off over fields where the dew is gathering on 
blooming clover and blading corn to catch the beams 
of a rising moon. To the planter the country was a 
sentiment; to the mill-owner and pig-iron manu- 
facturer a commercial agency. 

On Monday, December 3, 1860, Congress met, 
and on Thursday a resolution was offered in the 
Senate for the appointment of a Committee of 
Thirteen to consider the state of the country and 
recommend such legislation as would secure its 
peace. At once bitterly acrimonious discussion over 
the responsibility for the crisis began and continued 
growing fiercer day by day. Although condensed it 
covers pages of the Congressional Globe, abounding 
with epithets and innuendo. It was nightly clicked 
off by the telegraph to every leading newspaper. 
North and South, to be read the next morning with 
eager interest and increasing anxiety. 

On the twentieth a motion was made to adjourn 
over the holidays to January 2. Davis opposed the 
motion, saying: "I do not know that we'shall achieve 
much good by meeting, but in the present perilous 
condition of the country I am not willing to take a 



110 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

holiday. I propose that we shall continue our 
sessions, for good if God grants it, and for evil if 
we will have it so." 

On the tenth he had made quite a long speech, 
some of which was very untimely argument, I think, 
but as we all know well when passion is raging, as 
then, that wise master counsellor. Wisdom, with- 
draws and keeps her silence, for she knows her voice 
will not be heard. In the course of it, however, he 
said this: "I have heard with some surprise, for it 
seemed to me idle, the repetition of the assertion 
heretofore made, that the cause of the separation 
was the election of Mr. Lincoln. It may be a source 
of gratification to some gentlemen that their candi- 
date is elected; but no individual had the power to 
produce the existing state of things. It was the 
purpose, the end, it was the declaration by himself 
and friends which constitutes the necessity of provid- 
ing safeguards for ourselves." 

Later he said: "It may be pardoned me who in 
my boyhood was given to the military service, and 
who have followed under tropical suns and over 
northern snows the flag of the Union, suffering from 
it as it does not become me to speak of i4<, if I here 
express the deep sorrow which overwhelms me when 
I think of taking a last leave of that object of early 
affection and proud association. But God, who 
knows the heart of men, will judge between you and 
us at whose door lies the responsibility of this." 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 111 

After ten days of impassioned discussion the 
resolution for the appointment of a committee 
passed, and Davis was named as a member. He at 
once asked to be excused, but that night at the 
urgency of friends he consented to withdraw his 
dechnation, and the next day said: 

''Mr. President, in the very words which I 
addressed to the Senate yesterday I intended to 
express my conviction. It was not a matter of 
personal feeling with me. If I know myself, no 
pubHc duty ever is. My opinion was that the State 
of Mississippi having taken the subject into her 
own hands, I could not expect to work advantage- 
ously on the Committee. Neither could I under the 
circumstances enter upon the labor as willingly as I 
trust I have usually done in all my service. But if 
in the opinion of others it be possible for me to do 
anything for the public good, the last moment while 
I stand here Is at the command of the Senate. If I 
could see any means by which I could avert the 
catastrophe of a struggle between the sections of the 
Union, my past life, I hope, gives evidence of the 
readiness with which I would make the effort. If 
there be any sacrifice which I could offer on the 
altar of my country to heal all the evils, present or 
prospective, no man has the right to doubt my 
readiness to do it." 

Davis took "his seat on the committee and the 
record shows that he voted again and again for 



112 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

measures aimed to avert dangers and pacify the 
country; but all of them failed to receive the neces- 
sary majorities, and after sitting ten days it reported 
to Congress that it could not agree, and on December 
31 was discharged. 

Meanwhile the Gulf States, including his own, 
had called conventions that were then in session, 
and looking back at them now, their members in 
tempestuous delirium appear like so manj'- dead 
leaves in the swirl of the whirlwinds we sometimes 
see on a clear summer's day. On January 5 a con- 
ference of Southern Senators and Representatives 
was held in Washington, and at its end a letter was 
written to their respective Governors stating that 
every measure to preserve peace had failed and 
that in their judgment secession was the only 
ultimate safeguard for their interests. Davis was 
present and signed this report, and, whatsoever 
penalty may be the final verdict, he must bear it. 

Wliile this letter may have accelerated the move- 
ment, no power this side of Heaven could have 
stopped it. / Back of the North was the aroused 
conscience of the civili zed \v orld in its attitude 
toward slavery; back of the South was the funda- 
mental political axiom that peoples have the inalien- 
able right to decide the form and spirit of govern- 
ment which they will tolerate and submit to. 

Mississippi withdrew on January 9; and, in con- 
nection with this step, there was a preceding one 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 113 

which throws some light on Davis. In November, 
after South Carolina had taken wing, ,the Governor 
of Mississippi called home its Representatives in 
Congress for consultation as to the course of the 
State relative to secession. 0. R. Singleton, one of 
the members of the House who was present, wrote 
as follows concerning that conference: 

''The debate lasted many hours and Mr. Davis, 
with perhaps one other gentleman, opposed imme- 
diate and separate State action, declaring himself 
opposed to secession as long as the hope of a peace- 
able remedy remained. He did not believe we ought 
to precipitate the issue, as he felt certain from his 
knowledge of the people North as well as South, 
that once there was a clash of arms, the contest 
would be one of the most sanguinary the world had 
ever witnessed. 

A majority of the meeting decided that no delay 
be interposed for separate State action, Mr. Davis 
being on the other side, but after the vote was taken 
and the question decided, Mr. Davis declared he 
would stand by whatever action the Convention, 
representing the sovereignty of the State of Missis- 
sippi, should think proper to take. After the con- 
ference ended, several of its members were dissatisfied 
with the course of Mr. Davis, believing that he was 
entirely opposed to secession and was seeking to 
delay action upon the part of Mississippi with the 
hope that it might be entirely averted." 



114 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Clay of Alabama, who was arrested and confined 
in Fort Monroe with Davis, sometime before death 
overtook him, wrote: ''Mr. Davis did not take an 
active part in planning or hastening secession. 
I think he only regretfully consented to it as a 
political necessity for the preservation of State 
Rights. 

I know that some leading men and evenxMississip- 
pians thought him too moderate and backward, 
and found fault with him for not taking a leading 
part in secession." 

These letters from friends of Jefferson Davis were 
written after the war and are to be construed in 
the light of defense and sympathy for a lost cause. 
But does defeat crush the life out of all honor and 
truthfulness? If the Revolution had met that fate, 
would a letter from Hamilton, John Marshall, or 
John Adams be discredited as to anything they saw, 
heard, or did before they took their stand agamst 
Great Britain? We think not; for honor and truth- 
fulness are deep-rooted plants in the American 
character. Give these letters, then, the weight which 
the scales of reason and knowledge of human 
nature may say is their worth as evidence. 

The official notice from the Governor of Missis- 
sippi, that the State had withdrawn from the 
Union, reached Davis on the twentieth of January, 
1861, and on that day he wrote to Ex-President 
Pierce: 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 113 

" I have often and sadly turned my thoughts to 
you during the troublous times through which we 
have been passing, and now I come to the hard task 
of announcing to you that the hour is at hand which 
closes my connection with the United States for the 
independence and union of which my father bled 
and in the service of which I have sought to emulate 
the example he set for my guidance. . . . 

May God bless you is ever the prayer of your 
friend, Jefferson Davis." 

It was known that, on the following day, Davis 
would take leave of the Senate, and as soon as the 
doors were opened the galleries, aisles, and all 
standing room were filled. Every Senator was in 
his seat, all eyes were on Davis, and awe and wonder 
were in every heart-beat. 

The hour came, he rose — care had left her tracks 
of a sleepless night in his pale face and, as his eyes 
swept the men he had served with so long, streams 
of regret poured out of them for agreeable associa- 
tions that would never be enjoyed again. 

His voice at first was low — he had been unwell 
for several days — but as he went on restating the 
grounds of his political views, the sovereignty of 
the States and their right to exercise that sovereignty 
in the face of appalling dangers, his voice regained 
its vibrating, winsome modulation and earnestness. 
He closed as follows: 



116 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

"In the course of my service here, associated at 
different times with a great variety of Senators, 
I see now around me some with whom I have served 
long; there have been points of difference, but 
whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave 
here. I carry with me no hostile remembrance. 
Whatever offense I have given which has not been 
redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been 
demanded I have. Senators, in the hour of our 
parting to offer you my apology for every pain which 
in the heat of discussion I have inflicted. I go hence 
unencumbered by the remembrance of any injury 
received, and having discharged the duty of making 
the only reparation in my power for any injury 
offered. 

Mr. President and Senators, having made the 
announcement which the occasion seemed to me to 
require, it only remains for me to bid you a final 
adieu." 

There is a strain of knightly manliness, its tones 
mingled with sorrow and regret, running through 
the conclusion of this leave-taking; a strain that 
the spirit of the dead Confederacy can dwell on in 
her loneUness with pensive pride. 

We doubt if in all his career he ever rose above 
the level of that occasion; nor one, it seems to me, 
when all the elements of his character were in fairer 
light or fuller play. That apology for any wrong 
or pain inflicted; that assurance to his associates 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 117 

in the Senate of going away unencumbered by the 
remembrance of a single injury received from any 
one of them, speak for the inborn goodwill and 
chivalry of his nature. 

Persons who were present say that as he made 
his way out of the Senate Chamber, hushed by a 
portentous awe of what it all meant, he was followed 
by many swimming eyes. 

This farewell to the Senate marked one of the 
crests in his life's travelled road. Behind him lay 
what has already been set forth, his services to his 
country in the field where he shed his blood in 
defense of her flag; his Congressional and official 
life where he had been steadfastly loyal to her ideals. 
Meanwhile not a stain had fallen on his private, 
nor a charge of insincerity or unscrupulous ambition 
on his public, character. The broad-minded Repub- 
licans in the Senate, although opposing and con- 
demning his political views, nevertheless held him 
personally in highest respect, and those of both 
parties who knew him intimately, in warmest 
affection. As for the public at large he had never 
courted its esteem, yet he had never joined a group 
or addressed an assemblage. North or South, in 
Faneuil Hall or New Orleans, without securing it 
* — a mighty proof of his intellectual power and the 
atmosphere of personality in which nature had 
clothed him. On every occasion in all the years 
that now lay behind him, he had stood for the 



118 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sovereignty of the States as well as the sovereignty 
of the Government which they had created and set 
over them; maintaining that there was a vein con- 
necting the political bodies of both in which the 
same blood flowed with every heart-beat of the 
Nation. 

It is true, and natural, that the inveterate haters 
of slavery and the South were glad to see the last 
of him; inasmuch as for years they had suffered, as 
the ambitious always suffer, in the presence of an 
opponent born into a class of acknowledged social 
prestige who meets their heated arguments, not 
only with cool, masterful reply, but also uniform 
urbanity, augmented in Davis' case with that 
unconscious air of austerity in which nature had 
wrapped him. Many had been their conflicts with 
him, but he had never lost his self-control ; not even 
when defending the South from their severe denun- 
ciation and, at times, outrageous abuse; moreover, 
he used no opprobrious or abusive language, yet 
there was a tone of challenging defiance in his voice 
and manner that showed indignation. His departure, 
then, from Congress was the end of a long and galling 
servitude for leaders that might be mentioned; a 
servitude of a kind and nature that always forges 
while it is endured those well-known characteristic 
weapons — obloquy and revenge. The history of 
our country abundantly shows that, so long as 
certain leaders and their disciples lived, these 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 119 

weapons were in use, let the spirit of goodwill and 
magnanimity which Grant showed Lee at Appomat- 
tox plead as it may with their users to lay them down. 

Mrs. Davis says in her Memoirs that that night 
she heard the often reiterated prayer, ''May God 
have us all in His holy keeping, and grant that 
before it is too late, peaceful councils may prevail." 
That prayer was not alone in its heavenward flight; 
like prayers were going up from many a bended 
knee in North and South. 

As soon as they could gather up their belongings, 
Davis, Mrs. Davis and the three children set off 
for home. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana having seceded, 
held conventions and appointed delegates to meet in 
Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 and there lay 
the foundation of a provisional government. These 
delegates were chosen from the political leadership 
class, men who had made their mark; some for native 
ability; some for glowing eloquence; all for well- 
sustained integrity and character. Among them 
were Toombs, Stephens, the brothers Howell and 
T. R. Cobb of Georgia, Judge Chilton of Alabama, 
Rhett, Withers and Barnwell of South Carolina. 
Barnwell was a very wealthy planter carrying the 
atmosphere of gentleness, thoughtfulness and right- 
eousness; a fine type of man for the building of a 
State. 

By the time they reached Montgomery, it was 
overflowing with rabid politicians from all over the 
Southern States, hankering for war and swaggering 
in every hotel lobby and in every garish barroom. 
The delegates, forty-two out of the forty-eight 
appointed, organized by electing Howell Cobb for 
chairman, a bulky man with a broad face, double 
chin and mild, serious eyes, who had lately left 

120 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 121 

Buchanan's disrupting Cabinet, and was an ardent 
Secessionist. He and his brother were men of fine, 
high character and their memories are cherished by 
their native State to this day. 

The Convention proceeded at once to draft a 
constitution for the provisional government, taking 
the one their forefathers had built and making only 
such changes as would more explicitly embody 
their ideas of state sovereignty, and such notions 
of administration as experience under the old one 
had suggested. 

Along toward midnight on Friday the eighth, 
the Constitution was agreed upon, and the Conven- 
tion adjourned till noon the next day for choice of a 
president, a captain to sail the ship they had 
launched in the face of a stormy sea; the voting to 
be by States. As it turned out, there were three 
delegates who in secret cherished the hope that 
they would be chosen for the presidency, the chair- 
man Cobb, Stephens and Toombs, all from Georgia. 

Stephens in body was a puny man with a sad, 
appealing, beardless face, his eyes a rich hazel, 
his voice thin and high. He had vigorously opposed 
secession, and Lincoln had practically offered him 
a place in his Cabinet; the letters they exchanged 
on this matter are well worth reading for the light 
they throw on the times and the men themselves. 

Toombs was in marked contrast to Stephens; 
he was conspicuously large, with plenteous, shiny, 



122 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

black hair and glistening white teeth which flashed 
in his laughter, for by nature he was joyous, but 
when in ofl5ce, however, there was an air of urgent, 
imperative demeanor about him, re-inforced by 
abilities that had no acknowledged equal among 
his fellows to master the intricacies of finance or 
problems of state administration. Beneath all 
these endowments was an unsubduable restlessness 
when under authority which impaired his usefulness, 
annoyed his superiors, and embittered his old age. 

As soon as the Convention adjourned, T. R. Cobb, 
a younger brother of the chairman and who wrote 
to his wife almost daily, in a letter written on the 
eleventh says: **We had a counting by noses and 
found that Alabama, Mississippi and Florida were 
for Davis, Louisiana and Georgia for my brother 
Howell, South Carolina divided between Davis and 
Cobb with Memminger and Withers wavering. 
Howell immediately announced his wish that Davis 
should be nominated unanimously." 

When the Georgia delegation met at ten o'clock, 
Stephens at once moved that a complimentary 
vote be given Toombs. Whereupon T. R. Cobb 
observed that it would put Toombs in an awkward 
position, as four of the six States were for Davis. 
That was a surprise to Toombs and, doubting the 
statement, he asked Crawford, one of its members, 
to go out and report the facts. On Crawford's 
return verifying Cobb's statement that Davis 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 123 

was virtually the choice of all the other states, 
Toombs with spontaneous good will nominated 
Stephens for the vice-presidency. A dead silence 
ensued upon this very unexpected move; then Howell 
Cobb got up and went out, followed by Bartokvhis 
colleague, who was killed at Bull Run. The younger 
Cobb wrote to his wife that it was a bitter pill to 
swallow — Stephens, who had opposed secession, had 
been rewarded with its first honors. 

At noon the delegates met and elected Davis 
and Stephens unanimously, and appointed a special 
messenger to notify Davis of his election. The 
Convention then took up the framing of a consti- 
tution for the permanent government. T. R. Cobb, 
a profoundly religious man, an elder in the 
Presbyterian Church, offered four motions: that 
the newborn government should be named "the 
Republic of Washington"; that there should be 
an explicit recognition of God; that the slave trade 
be absolutely forbidden; and no mails be carried 
on Sunday. This last motion was lost by a single 
vote; and, fortunately for South and North, the 
Convention defeated his first motion, sparing the 
name of Washington from association with the 
tragedy of a sectional war. The other motions 
prevailed. 

Before Davis reached Montgomery, Cobb wrote 
his wife saying: ''The best friends of the Confederacy 
here are troubled at the continuous rumors of 



124 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis being a Reconstructionist; that is, one ready 
to make a settlement with the North and the 
States resume their places in the Union." 

Do not these rumors bear some testimony, at 
least, that Davis had not held extreme views? 
We think they do. 

A few days before the arrival of the special 
messenger bearing the tidings of his election, Davis 
had had a conference with the foremost among 
the slaves, advising them in case public affairs 
should call him away, to have a care for the planta- 
tion, and above all to look after the aged and helpless. 

Upon asking Bob, the oldest among them and 
who had suffered long from rheumatism, what he 
would like for his comfort, he requested rocking 
chairs for himself and Rhinah his wife. Davis 
bought the chairs as well as a number of blankets 
for the old couple, and cochineal flannel for Bob 
to wrap his rheumatic limbs. Mrs. Davis says 
in her Memoirs that when the Union soldiers after 
the fall of Vicksburg sacked the plantation, they 
took all of Uncle Bob's blankets, declaring against 
his remonstrances that he had stolen them. 

The special messenger found Davis in his garden 
assisting in rose-cutting; that night he assembled 
all his slaves and bade them an affectionate farewell, 
and the next morning started for Montgomery. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Davis' inauguration took place in the Capitol, 
whither he was accompanied by Stephens the vice- 
president, and a Reverend Mr. Manly. Alabama 
had provided a handsome coach lined with saffron 
and white silk hangings, and drawn by six spirited 
iron-gray horses driven by a colored man, of course, 
who doubtless was the proudest of his race that day. 

The marshals were decorated with white silk 
scarfs, every building in holiday attire, and vast, 
cheering crowds, white and black, thronging the 
streets. On arrival at the State House, Davis 
was conducted by Rhett of South Carolina and 
Chilton of Alabama to the Congress in session; 
Rhett saying: ''Gentlemen of the Congress, allow 
me to present to you the Honorable Jefferson Davis, 
who in obedience to your choice has come to assume 
the important trust you have confided to his care." 

Davis was then escorted to a platform erected 
in front of the imposing Capitol; on a table lay the 
Bible in the midst of a wreath of red, white and 
blue flowers. If that blessed, sacred book should 
write its memoirs, we are quite sure it will embrace 
that wreath of red, white and blue among the mighty 
incidents of its wondrous career. He took the 

125 



126 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

oath and then read his inaugural. Its close was as 
follows : 

'^Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers 
to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate 
the principle which by His blessing they were able 
to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity. 
With the continuance of His favor ever gratefully 
acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to 
success and prosperity." 

His inaugural was not keyed on home, its fire- 
sides, its inalienable rights to be free from a perpet- 
ually menacing danger, but on bleak, cold-blooded 
legal rights; and thus, lacking in sentiment and 
appeal, falls far below, as an effective State paper, 
that of Lincoln delivered a few weeks later. Napoleon 
said, and it is true, '' 'Tis by speaking to the soul 
that you electrify men." These two inaugurals 
make clear the difference of the mold and clay 
in the natures of these two historically linked-up 
characters. 

Davis, in dwelling upon the men for his Cabinet, 
had decided upon Toombs for Secretary of the 
Treasury and Barnwell of South Carolina for 
Secretary of State. It so happened that he first wrote 
to Barnwell, who meanwhile, having joined his 
fellow-members of the Provisional Congress in 
recommending their colleague Memminger, a com- 
mercial lawyer, for Secretary of the Treasury, 
declined on grounds of propriety, knowing well that 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 127 

public opinion would not approve of South Carolina 
holding two appointments in the Cabinet. Davis 
then offered the position to Toombs, who after 
some hesitation accepted. 

The other positions were filled by Walker of 
Alabama for Secretary of War, Mallory of Florida 
for Secretary of the Navy, Reagan of Texas for 
Postmaster-General; for Attorney-General, Benjamin 
of Louisiana, a Hebrew born with a perpetual 
smile, who had married a French Roman Catholic 
and was by far the all-around ablest man 
in the Cabinet. He had served in the Senate with 
Davis, and on one occasion when debating an 
army bill, Davis, in a nervous, irascible state from 
illness, made remarks in replying to him that he 
felt were insulting. He sent Davis a challenge by 
the hands of Senator Bayard of Delaware. Davis 
on reading the challenge tore it up, saying: '^I was 
all wrong, and will apologize to Benjamin," and 
the next day in open Senate made handsome amends. 

Davis, in the first letter to his wife after 
reaching Montgomery, said: ''I was inaugm-ated on 
Wednesday. Upon my weary heart were showered 
smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I 
saw troubles and thorns innumerable. We are 
without machinery, without means, and threatened 
by a powerful opposition, but I do not despond 
and will not shrink from the task imposed upon it. " 

That he thoroughly realized the South's unreadi- 



128 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ness for war is made clear by a resume of its unpre- 
paredness found among the papers of Colonel 
Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance for the Confederacy. 
Gorgas was a graduate of West Point; he married 
a daughter of Governor Gayle of Alabama and, 
although a Pennsylvanian, joined the South. It 
was his son, a surgeon in the United States Army, 
who overcame yellow fever, gaining a fame that 
winged its way the world around. It appears from 
the papers of Colonel Gorgas that there were about one 
hundred and fifty thousand arms in the arsenals, chiefly 
smooth-bore muskets; no equipment for infantry, 
artillery or cavalry; no field artillery or cartridges 
[the state and volunteer militia companies, however, 
had a few batteries and serviceable arms]; no rifle, 
and only about sixty thousand pounds of old cannon 
powder, and two hundred and fifty thousand per- 
cussion caps; no machinery in the arsenals to 
speak of and not a firearm or gun carriage had 
been made in the South for fifty years; not a rifle 
powder mill, and but one cannon foundry, the 
Tredegar Works at Richmond, in the entire South. 
For years after the War the charge was made, 
and it is believed to be true to this day by thousands 
of naturally fair-minded people born since the 
conflict, that the South, premeditating secession, 
secured the transfer from the North of vast quantities 
of small arms and cannon. Here are the facts as 
estabUshed by Congressional investigation: 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 129 

First. The Ordnance Department in 1857 offered 
for sale fifty out of one hundred and ninety thousand 
muskets on hand. The only Southern State that 
made a bid was Louisiana; it bid for five thousand 
at the rate of $2.50 apiece, and finally took only 
two thousand five hundred; the balance were left 
on the hands of the Department. 

Second. On the twenty-ninth of December, 
1859, eleven months before Lincoln's election, the 
Secretary of War ordered one-fifth of the old flint- 
lock and percussion muskets stored at the Springfield 
Armory, Springfield, Mass., to be sent to Southern 
arsenals to make room for guns of a better model. 
[It was the barrels of these guns that inspired 
Longfellow's poem.] One hundred and fifteen 
thousand were sent, and they were included in 
Gorgas' one hundred and fifty thousand. 

Third. In late December, 1860, financial irreg- 
ularities of a serious natm'e on the part of John B. 
Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, who up to 
that time had been a pronounced opponent of 
secession, were called to the attention of Buchanan, 
who asked for explanations. Floyd, so it was alleged, 
foreseeing an enforced resignation with its trailing 
disgrace, shifted from an opponent to an advocate 
of secession and, during the ten days preceding 
his formal resignation, ordered cannon to be sent 
from Pittsburgh to forts along the southern coast. 
But the eyes of the North, doubting his loyalty, 



130 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

were on him, and his orders were countermanded; 
these guns thundered at last in defense of the 
Government that had made them. So much, then, 
for the proof of premeditation on the part of the 
South to make war on the North [as a matter of 
fact it had never gone a step beyond fits of bluster] ; 
and so much, too, for the prospect that spread 
away from the ''smiles, plaudits and flowers" of the 
inauguration of its first and only President. 

On the twenty-seventh of February, Davis 
appointed three Commissioners to go to Washington 
for the ''settlement of all questions of disagreement 
between the two governments upon principles of 
right, justice, equity and good faith." 

They arrived in Washington a few days before 
Buchanan's fluctuating, bewildered administration 
ended, but to his credit, he refused them audience. 



CHAPTER XV 

And now that we may have a clear view of the 
actual outbreak of the war by the firing on Fort 
Sumter and Davis' responsibility for that prodigious 
tactical blunder, we must turn back from the 
eighteenth of February, the date of his inauguration, 
to December 11. On that day the War Department 
in Washington wrote to Major Anderson, a Ken- 
tuckian commanding a company of Regulars, the 
only forces in Charleston, and who was occupying 
Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island, a weak and easily 
accessible fieldwork: ''You are carefully to avoid 
every act which would needlessly tend to provoke 
aggression; and for that reason you are not, without 
evident and imminent necessity, to take up any 
position which could be construed into the assump- 
tion of a hostile attitude, but you are to hold pos- 
session of the forts of the harbor, and if attacked 
you are to defend yourself to the last extremity." 

To comprehend fully the circumstance under 
which he exercised the powers and intent of this 
order, it must be borne in mind that ever since 
South Carolina had seceded she had indulged in an 
orgy of bluster and grotesque assumptions of sov- 
ereignty, which in the light of today are amusing 
and astounding. For example, it sent three Com- 

131 



132 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

missioners to Washington empowered to treat with 
the Government of the United States for the delivery 
of the forts, magazines and Hghthouses in South Caro- 
Una; for an apportionment of the pubhc debt; a part 
of the territories; and division of all other property 
held by the Government of the United States, which 
of course meant ships, gold in the treasury, etc. 
Indeed, from the Governor down to the whiskey 
and brandy decanting barkeepers in shirt sleeves 
of the crov/ded saloons, a fantastic war delirium 
prevailed in Charleston. All business in that rose- 
blooming, beautiful city was suspended, and gaily 
dressed militia companies, carrying the Palmetto 
flag and keeping step proudly to fife and drum, 
paraded the streets daily, manifesting an ever- 
increasing disrespect for Anderson and his soldiers. 
As early as November 29 the Governor wrote to a 
Mr. Prescott, Assistant Secretary of State at 
Washington, who was secretly informing him of all 
that was going on in the various departments: 
''I have found great difficulty in restraining the 
people of Charleston from seizing the forts, etc." 
The situation became so threatening at last that 
Anderson, on the night after Christmas, spiked the 
guns, burned their carriages, and transferred his 
command to Fort Sumter three miles down the 
harbor from the city. 

This move startled South Carolina; but delighted 
the men of backbone in the North, who^^although 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 133 

not in favor of war, were resenting her bullying 
gasconade. This display of loyalty lifted Anderson 
to fame, and the chime of bells hung in his honor 
in the belfry of West Point's stately chapel over- 
looking the Hudson and Highlands does now and 
will through coming years proclaim his name. 

South CaroHna, frothing with rage, began to 
throw up batteries bearing on Sumter and along 
the channel leading out to the ocean four miles 
away, to prevent any ship coming in with reinforce- 
ments for Anderson; meanwhile, the Governor of 
the State sent one of his aides demanding ''cour- 
teously but peremptorily" that he should return 
his command to Fort Moultrie, which Anderson, 
with language equally courteous and peremptory, 
declined to do. 

The Administration, as soon as it heard from 
him, secretly took steps for his reinforcement and 
relief; on the fifth of January the Star of the West, 
a merchant vessel sailed from New York with one 
hundred fifty Regulars, and supplies. The ship 
reached the mouth of the harbor on the ninth and, 
as soon as she came within range on her inward 
trip to Sumter, batteries opened on her and she 
had to withdraw and return home. 

It is easy now to see that, had Buchanan, as he 
first intended, sent the Brooklyn — intrepid Farrugut 
was in command of her — instead of the Star of the 
West, the history of those days would not be what 



134 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

it is and the roar of the Brooklyn's guns would be 
heard to this day in hterature and poetry; but at 
the urgent advice of friends to avoid giving offense 
and provoking war, he sent a merchant, and not a 
war, vessel. 

The Governor of South Carolina now posted her 
Attorney-General to Washington with some pre- 
posterous demands. Davis, who had not yet resigned 
his seat in the Senate, joined the Senators from 
Florida, Louisiana, and Texas in a letter to him 
saying: ''We desire to see such an adjustment, and 
to prevent war or the shedding of blood. We must 
and will share your fortunes, suffering with you the 
evils of war if it cannot be avoided; and enjoying 
with you the blessings of peace, if it can be preserved. 
We therefore think it especially due from South 
Carolina — to say nothing of other slaveholding 
States — that she should, as far as she can consist- 
ently with her honor, avoid initiating hostilities 
between her and the United States, or any other 
power." It has been charged by several historians 
that this letter was a mere mask on Davis' part 
to give the South more time to get ready for war. 
On the contrary I am willing to believe he was 
plotting for time to give the old love of the Union 
time to make one more appeal, hoping thereby that 
adjustments might be made at last to avoid blood- 
shed. We leave that, however, to the final judge 
of us all. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 135 

Buchanan very properly refused to give an 
audience to the South Carolinian ambassador. The 
cloud that envelops Buchanan is black and deep; 
but, when all the facts are laid bare the conclusion 
is irresistible, that great injustice has been done 
him. Oh, the ghosts that shriek from the graveyards 
of history over malicious and irreparable wrongs! 

Such, then, was the state of affairs at Washington 
and at Charleston when Davis, a few days after 
his inauguration, received an appeal from the 
Governor of South Carolina to assume control of 
all forces getting ready to open fire on Sumter. 
He at once sent Beauregard to take command in 
the name of the Confederacy ''but not to begin 
the attack"; for at that very time the Peace Con- 
ference, assembled by request of Virginia to avert 
a conflict between the sections, was in session, and 
prayers were going up from South and North 
imploring God to bless its efforts. 

Lincoln, on the eighth of March, four days after 
his inaugural, called the first council of his Cabinet 
to discuss the situation at Charleston. On the 
fifteenth he called them together again; it appeared 
that General Scott, who had privately advised 
Buchanan to reinforce and hold Fort Sumter, had 
changed his mind and now recommended that it be 
given up and the ''wayward sisters" be allowed to 
go in peace. In the face of this serious turn of 
affairs, Lincoln put the question, "assuming it to 



136 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, is it well 
under all the circumstances to attempt it?" Chase 
and Blair said ''yes" and the latter emphatically; 
Seward, Cameron, Welles, Smith and Bates said 
''no." 

On the twentieth, Lincoln sent Lamon his long- 
time friend and law partner, to South Carolina to 
find out just how things stood. Meanwhile parleys 
relative to supplies, mails, etc., were going on 
between Anderson, officers of the War Department 
and the South Carolina authorities. Lamon reached 
Charleston on the twenty-fifth and lost no time in 
seeing the Governor. At the interview he told him 
that Lincoln had practically made up his mind to 
withdraw Anderson. Lamon escorted by Colonel 
Duryea, one of the Governor's^^ides, then went to 
see Anderson and told him the same story, which is 
confirmed by the following extracts from Anderson's 
letters in the first volume of War Records, to the 
Adjutant-General : 

"The remarks made to me by Colonel Lamon, 
taken in connection with the tenor of the newspapers 
here, induced me, as stated in previous communica- 
tions, to believe that orders would soon be issued 
for abandoning this work." In a letter received in 
Washington on the twenty-ninth: "Having been 
in daily expectation since the return of Colonel 
Lamon to Washington of receiving orders to vacate 
the Fort, I have kept these laborers as long as I 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 137 

could" [They were clearing up the cisterns of the 
Fort.] ''Mr. Lamon left here [Charleston] last 
night sajdng that Major Anderson and command 
would soon be withdrawn from Fort Sumter in a 
satisfactory manner," so wrote Beauregard to Davis 
on the twenty-sixth. On the same day Beauregard 
wrote Anderson : 

"My dear Major: Having been informed that 
Mr. Lamon, the authorized agent of the President, 
advised Governor Pickens, after his interview with 
you at Fort Sumter that yourself and command 
would be transferred to another port in a few days;" 
and then went on to say that he would provide 
suitable conveyances when Anderson was ready to 
move. 

Moreover there is unquestionable testimony that, 
while Lamon was South, Seward had assured the 
Commissioners appointed by Davis that the prom- 
ises he had made them that Fort Sumter would be 
evacuated would be kept. 

In the light of these letters and this testimony, 
was it not natural in Beauregard, Governor Pickens 
and Davis to believe that the authorities in Wash- 
ington were acting in good faith, and that Anderson 
would be withdrawn and war, at least for the 
'present, avoided? 

Meanwhile what was actually happening in 
Washington? Lamon, of course, hastened on his 
return to see Lincoln and must have told him all 



138 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the Governor said and all Anderson had said, and 
what he in turn had said to them. There is no 
evidence that Lincoln then or ever committed him- 
self to an absolute withdrawal of Anderson; on the 
other hand, there is no evidence that he ever dis- 
claimed Lamon's representations to the Governor 
or to Anderson. Seward, however, in an interview 
with Judge Campbell immediately after Lamon's 
return, declared that he (Lamon) had no agency 
from him (Lincoln), nor title to speak. 

Let all these circumstances, and a fleet with 
nearly one hundred guns and twenty-fom- hundred 
men gathering at the mouth of Charleston harbor, 
speak for themselves as to good faith. 

On the twenty-ninth of March Lincoln assembled 
his Cabinet at noon and each member submitted 
written answers to a memorandum relating to 
reinforcing Anderson; the Cabinet was practically 
unanimously in favor of it. Thereupon Lincoln 
wrote to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of 
the Navy: '^I desire that an expedition to move by 
sea be got ready to sail as early as the sixth of 
April." On the fourth of April Lincoln, through 
the Secretary of War, notified Anderson that he 
would be reinforced. Anderson acknowledged that 
letter on the eighth, saying: ''I ought to have been 
informed that this expedition was to come; Colonel 
Lamon convinced me that the idea, merely hinted 
at by Captain Fox, would not be carried out." Fox 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 139 

had been to see him before Buchanan's term ended, 
relative to reinforcing him by the bay. 

This quick about-face of the Administration 
must have stunned Lamon. 

On the evening of April 8, Robert S. Chew, Chief 
Clerk of the State Department, and in his old age, 
when I saw him, a venerable, admirable gentleman, 
delivered in person this message to Governor Pickens : 

"I am directed by the President of the United 
States to notify you to expect an attempt will be 
made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, 
and if such attempt be not resisted no effort to 
throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made 
without further notice or in case of an attack upon 
it." Pickens called in Beauregard who was in 
an adjoining room to hear this message. 

Beauregard immediately wrote Davis: "An 
authorized messenger from Lincoln has just 
informed Governor Pickens and myself that provi- 
sions will be sent to Fort Sumter, peaceably if they 
can, forcibly if they must." 

To this Davis replied: ''If you have no doubt of 
the authorized character of the agent [he was 
evidently thinking of Lamon] who communicated 
to you the intentions of the Washington Government 
to supply Fort Sumter by force, you will at once 
demand its evacuation, and if this be refused, pro- 
ceed in such manner as you may determine to 
reduce it." 



140 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Had Beauregard sent Lincoln's notice in full and 
not a paraphrase, we have often wondered what 
would have been Davis' answer? Would he have 
realized the significance of Lincoln's adroit threat 
— if that be the right name for it — and parried 
it by ordering Beauregard to notify Washington 
that he would supply Anderson with every possible 
need for the welfare and comfort of himself and his 
troops, thus escaping the responsibility of firing 
the first shot? I am afraid not; for Davis was not 
built on the line of shrewdness; but had he done so, 
Lincoln could not have said, as he did in his message 
to Congress a few months later, that he was bound 
to relieve a starving garrison, knowing full well the 
weight of that word ''starving." Lincoln knew his 
fellow men far, far better than Davis, and he also 
knew far better than he how to strike the tender 
chords of their nature. He forced Davis to fire that 
first shot, the shot that struck the heart of the 
North, tearing away all the questions of law and 
expediency that were hampering its free move- 
ments. 

Beauregard, who was itching to begin the attack, 
upon receipt of Davis' despatch, sent a letter to 
Anderson demanding the evacuation of the Fort. 
Anderson in reply said his sense of honor prevented 
compliance with the demand; but, when handing 
his letter to Beauregard's aide, he remarked that 
in a few days he would be starved out whether the 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 141 

Confederate guns did or did not batter the Fort to 
pieces. 

Upon hearing this statement from his aide, 
Beam-egard sent him back to Anderson to ask when 
he would agree to give up the Fort. Anderson 
said: "At noon on the fifteenth if meanwhile I do 
not receive controlling instructions or supplies." 
• Beaiu-egard referred the matter to the Confederate 
Secretary of War, who, of course, carried it at once 
to Davis, who probably dictated the answer: ''We 
do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter," 
that if Anderson would agree to evacuate he should 
not be fired upon, but in case he refused, Beauregard 
was to use his own judgment. Beauregard immedi- 
ately sent word to Anderson that he would open 
fire at 4.30 a.m. the next day, which he did, and 
after a day and night's bombardment, Anderson 
lowered his flag. Davis in acknowledging the 
despatch from Beauregard announcing the sur- 
render said: "If occasion offers, tender my friendly 
'remembrances to Major Anderson." They had 
been Cadets together at West Point. 

My pen has dwelt, and perhaps too long for the 
reader's patience, on the firing of Sumter; but, as 
Davis was officially responsible for the momentous 
deed, it has seemed to me only fair to him that all 
the circumstances be resurrected, and stand once 
more as living witnesses before the bar of public 
opinion. It has been claimed, and in one sense 



142 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

truly, that he made a great blunder tactical and 
political, in giving the first blow, a blow which the 
manhood and honor of the North felt deeply and 
was bound to resent; but over and above all, incur- 
ring the moral responsibility for beginning the war, 
v/hich to this day overshadows him and the South. 
Yet, in the inexorable march of the world's progress, 
it was ordained that from some one, in his or the 
following generation at latest, a first shot should 
be fired, so intense was the feeling, so inevitable 
was the struggle between the sections, from the 
day the bells.tolled the funeral of John Brown. 

Upon the fall of Sumter, Lincoln called for seventy- 
five thousand men, virtually declaring war, and we 
think rightly, on the Confederacy. This call included 
North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia,, and under 
it the overstrained ties that bound them to the 
Union snapped, and they rushed to the defense of 
their fellow Southern States. Strangely enough, but 
true, from that day on to the end, in every eye that 
fell on the banners they lifted, from the Potomac 
to the Rio Grande, they were banners, not in defense 
of slavery, but in resistance of an invasion of home. 
While in the eyes of the North, as a whole, from the 
coast of Maine to the Pacific they were banners of 
treason locked in the embrace of slavery. Be that 
as it may, after three years of battle had elapsed 
I saw both flags, the Stars and Stripes and that of 
Lee's army, flying for hours within a few paces of 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 143 

each other after the explosion of the crater at 
Petersburg; a gentle breeze would now and then 
waft them out from their staffs, and to my eyes 
they really looked friendly and gallant. 



CHAPTER XVI 

In May, 1861, the capital of the Confederacy was 
moved from Montgomery. Although Montgomery 
is beautiful, indeed charming, yet the transfer of 
the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond was 
almost imperative in view of the fact that the first 
and main attacks would be from the direction of 
Washington; the President had to be near, not only 
for consultation, but to settle questions which 
did not admit of delay. 

The change was in every sense fortunate and 
propitious. A city with finer good manners, freer 
from cheap politicians, or with more stimulating 
and richer traditions could not have been chosen 
for a capital; there the heart of the Old Dominion 
beat, whose arms in pre-colonial times had been 
quartered with those of her mother. Great Britain. 
From the very beginning of our country, and espe- 
cially throughout the South, Virginia enjoyed a 
position of pride and reverence in the affections of 
the people : her sons, with Franklin and the Adamses 
of Massachusetts, had been the master workmen 
in building the government and directing its course; 
at her firesides had sat Washington, Henry, 
Marshall, Madison, Jefferson, the Lees, Masons 

144 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 145 

and Randolphs, and in their names Richmond and 
Virginia welcomed the Confederacy, staking all 
as in Colonial days, on that immortal principle — 
the right of a religiously free and intelHgent people 
to decide the kind of a government that should 
rule over them. And now with more than seventeen 
thousand soldiers dead Richmond keeps on her 
way with the same good manners and the same 
graceful, unconscious dignity, holding dear the 
memory of the Confederacy that made her its 
capital and the ashes of its President now resting 
on the banks of the James as it swings along by 
its last green islands on its way to the sea. 

Before the removal from Montgomery, one army 
under Joseph E. Johnston had assembled in front 
of Harper's Ferry and one at Manassas under 
Beauregard. On the twenty-first of July the Battle 
of Bull Run was fought, and Davis, keyed with 
anxiety, left Richmond and arrived at Manassas 
Junction four or five miles from where the fighting 
was going on at about three o'clock in the afternoon. 

The forenoon had gone badly; the station was 
thronged with stragglers who crowded about the 
train with the usual fearful stories of defeat. Davis, 
looking for some one who could give him reliable 
information, espied a man with a gray beard and a 
calm face, who told him that their line was broken, all 
was confusion, the army routed, and the battle lost. 

He finally reached Beauregard's headquarters 



146 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and, while horses were being got ready, Beauregard's 
adjutant-general advised him of the hazard he 
took in going to the field, that as President he ought 
not to expose himself to its dangers. But the spirit 
that had carried him to the front at Monterey and 
Buena Vista had not grown timid with age, and he 
set out for the guns that he could faintly hear. 

They soon encountered shoals of stragglers and 
then the limping, bleeding wounded. Davis says 
that among them was a mere boy badly hurt and 
supported on the shoulder of a man, who swung his 
hat with a cheer as he passed him. I hope that little 
gallant fellow lived through the war and enjoyed 
an old age blessed with friends and plenty. 

After a while, Davis fell in with Johnston, whose 
army most opportunely had joined Beauregard, 
and was told that the victory had been won, 
though fitful firing from the breaking Union forces 
was still going on. By that time the sun was low. 

Davis then went to the extreme left of the Con- 
federate line and there fell in with General Early, 
whose forces were lying down resting waiting for 
orders. Early told him of near-by wounded that 
needed attention, especially a Colonel Gordon of 
the Eighth Georgia. Davis at once looked up Gordon 
and found him in severe pain and one of our Federal 
soldiers, a prisoner, ministering to, his wants. He 
then hunted up a surgeon and, upon leaving, Gordon 
asked him to give protection to the prisoner who 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 147 

had been so kind. Davis took the man's name and 
address and left orders on his return to headquarters 
that he should not be treated as a prisoner but be 
released and sent home. Some days after Davis 
had returned to Richmond, he received a notice 
from the officer in charge of prisoners that there 
was one who claimed that he had been promised 
protection by the President at Manassas. Davis 
sent for him and gave orders for his release and 
freedom to rejoin our lines at Fort Monroe. The 
man said he had a sister not far from Richmond 
whom he would like to visit before availing himself 
of parole. Davis readily granted the request, and 
the next thing heard from him was in a newspaper 
from the North .boasting how he had escaped, and 
how he had availed himself of the opportunity 
to visit the ''sister" to make sketches of the forti- 
fications around Richmond! I hope the good 
angels in charge of Paradise, out of compassion, have 
assigned a place to this bogus Samaritan somewhere 
a long way off from Davis — away, away on the 
other side of the Delectable Mountains — for I think 
it would be uncomfortable for him to meet the man 
who had befriended him. 

It was near eleven o'clock at night when Davis 
joined Johnston and Beauregard in an upper room 
of the headquarters, not one of them dreaming that 
at that very hour McDowell's troops were fleeing 
through the darkness in the wildest panic. 



148 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

While DaVis was at a table writing a despatch 
to Richmond, Beauregard's adjutant-general, 
Colonel Jordan, came upstairs, saying that an 
officer had just come who declared he had been as 
far as Centreville in the tracks of McDowell's 
forces and found the town full of artillery that they 
had abandoned. ''As soon as I had made my 
report," says Colonel Jordan, "Mr. Davis, with 
much animation, asserted the necessity for an urgent 
pursuit. I took my seat at the same table and wrote 
the order for pursuit substantially at the dictation 
of Mr. Davis. " This order, for one reason or another, 
was not carried out; the responsibility for failure 
of execution soon became a question attended 
with most serious results; some claiming after the 
war was over that it was the primal cause for the 
defeat of the Confederacy. Later, at the risk of 
wearying the reader, we shall have to go into this 
matter with detail, but for the present it must bide 
its time. 

With the break of daylight the next morning, a 
steady down-pouring, all-day rain began, and by 
the afternoon, when Davis set out to visit the 
hospitals in search of a youth of his own family 
reported sinking slowly, every little run and creek 
was bank full. At last at the approach of night he 
found the right hospital, and here is what he says: 
''It was too late, the soul of the young soldier had 
just left his body; the corpse lay before me.\ Around 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 149 

it were many gentle boys suffering in different 
degrees from the wounds they had received." One 
of them replied to his expressed sympathy that he 
was glad to die for such a cause, and Davis adds: 
''Many kindred spirits ascended to the Father 
from that field of glory." 

That night he had another conference over what 
was next to be done, with Johnston and Beauregard 
who by that time had gained a true measure of 
the victory; but both agreed they were not strong 
enough nor in condition to take the offensive. 
That settled, Davis promoted Beauregard to the 
rank of General with handsome recognition of the 
part he had played in the battle, and in the morn- 
ing returned to Richmond. 

For weeks the South was literally drunk with 
joy and pride over the victory; bonfires were lit, 
bells were rung, guns fired, old grudges were for- 
gotten and men and women embraced one another 
when they heard the news. But while sobering off, 
facts of the utter demoralization and flight of 
McDowell's army came filtering down through 
newspapers and from letters sent home by soldiers 
telling what they had seen and found in the track 
of their panic-stricken foes. Of course, from all 
over the South broke the usual question: "How in 
the world did it happen that Johnston, Beauregard 
and Davis, all three right on the ground, did not take 
advantage of such a rout to capture Washington?" 



150 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis wisely at first paid no attention to the 
malicious gossip that soon followed, and, with 
the limited means at hand, went on tackhng the 
distracting difficulties of arming and equipping 
new forces. 

At this point and now, a chapter which will be 
tedious for me to write, and more tedious I fear 
for the reader to read, must be devoted to the 
outcome of this malignant gossip, namely, an 
antagonism between Davis, Johnston and 
Beauregard which arrayed parties in the South with 
consequences fatal, it has been claimed, to the success 
of its cause. Moreover, it is one of the many tragic 
parts in the history of the Confederacy; but that 
phase has no immediate interest for my pen, it is 
the hues of Davis' personahty lit up by the unquench- 
able fires of the controversy. 

Congress, in May, passed a bill creating the 
regular Confederate Army [it had hitherto been a 
provisional one] providing for five general officers 
with the title of General, and conferring the power 
of selection on the President. A previous Act had a 
provision that officers resigning from the United 
States Army should have corresponding rank in the 
Confederate Army. 

Davis, on August 31, appointed to rank as Generals : 

1. Samuel Cooper, assigned as Adjutant-General 
and Chief of Staff, 

2. Albert Sydney Johnston, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 151 

3. Robert E. Lee, 

4. Joseph E. Johnston, 

5. P. T. Beauregard, 

and now trouble began. Cooper, Albert Sidney 
Johnston, and Lee had won no battles; and 
the jealous friends of Joseph E. Johnston and 
Beauregard were fiercely indignant. "Had not 
they won the greatest victory that had ever been 
won?" and lo! they were overslaughed by Davis' 
pets. "Are the leaders of the troops of the South 
to be chosen for merit and accomplishments, or 
for old-time friendships and capacity for adulation?" 
Johnston, immediately on receiving the general 
orders promulgating these appointments, protested 
that a great injustice had been done him, and was 
obviously touched to the quick, as the following 
extract from his letter to Davis shows: "It reduces 
my rank in the grade I hold. This has never been 
done heretofore in the regular service but by 
sentences of Court Martial. It seems to tarnish 
my fair fame as a soldier and as a man, earned by 
more than thirty years of laborious and perilous 
service." He ended his letter: "These views and 
the freedom with which they are presented may be 
unusual; so likewise is the occasion that calls them 
forth." Davis allowed his temper, ever quick when 
the integrity of his official action was impugned, 
to take the reins, and he acknowledged the receipt 
of that letter: "Its language is as you say 'unusual,' 



152 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

its arguments and statements utterly one-sided 
and its insinuations as unfounded as they are 
unbe'coming. " 

It is conceded that Johnston had a technical 
legal reason for his contention under one of the 
Acts preliminary to the General Act of Congress, 
but we will leave the decision as to whether or not 
he was right or wrong to minds better stored with 
law than mine. 

That Johnston was very sensitive, morbidly 
so it seems to me, as to rank, is illustrated by a letter 
written two days after the battle of Bull Run to 
Cooper, who had assigned, without consulting him, 
an officer to his staff. "I had already, " says Johnston, 
''selected Major Rhett for the position in question, 
and can admit the power of no officer of the Army 
to annul my order on the subject, nor can I admit 
the claim of any officer to command of the 'Forces', 
being myself the ranking General of the Con- 
federate Army." Later he wrote: "I had the honor 
to write you on the twentj''-fourth on the subject 
of my rank compared with other officers of the 
Confederate Army. Since then I have received 
daily orders purporting to come from Headquarters 
of the Forces. Such orders I cannot regard, because 
they are illegal." 

When Cooper sent these letters to Davis he 
endorsed them "Insubordinate." Lincoln once told 
Secretary Welles that McClellan was afflicted 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 153 

with the "slows;" Davis might have said that 
Johnston was afflicted with the ''snarls." But, 
seriously, of all the fungus growths that attach 
themselves to militarism, that of querulous fussiness 
about "rank" is the worst, and has impaired the 
usefulness and blighted the old age of many an 
otherwise good soldier. It was the ruin of Benedict 
Arnold. 

Meanwhile, the resolute North, stung by the defeat 
at Bull Run, was rushing troops to Washington, 
and McClellan, who had relieved McDowell, under 
the charm of his matchless personality, was organiz- 
ing them into a formidable army. The Navy, too 
was growing and, ever ready to undertake hazardous 
enterprises, led an expedition against Fort Hatteras 
which it captured on August 29, and then set sail 
for Port Royal, threatening Charleston and 
Savannah. 

The Southern pubHc, alarmed by these disasters, 
asked: "Why is the Army of Johnston and Beauregard 
lying idle?" Johnston heard the question at Fairfax 
Court House, and the last of September requested 
Davis to come up for a conference as to what he 
should do. On his arrival, Johnston called in 
Beauregard and G. W. Smith, a division commander, 
who, by the way, a few months later submitted to 
them a report which was kept secret till the war 
was over, of what took place at this interview. 
Davis did not see this report until twenty years had 



154 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

elapsed and it is needless to say it rekindled for a 
moment the dying-down fires in his nature. 

In discussing the situation as to future movements, 
it was proposed by Smith to cross the Potomac 
above Washington and force McClellan to come 
out of his works and fight them on an open field. 
Davis asked how many men they would need; Smith 
said fifty thousand; Johnston and Beauregard, 
sixty thousand seasoned troops, that is a reinforce- 
ment of about thirty thousand strong, and suggested 
that they be drawn from Norfolk, West Virginia, 
and Pensacola or wherever Davis could lay his 
hands on them. Davis told them it was not possible 
to detach from these locations, adding that the 
whole country was demanding protection and 
praying for arms and for defence, but that he would 
send all the reinforcements he could; and there 
the matter dropped. 

Apropos of the plan Johnston, Beauregard and 
Smith suggested, had they been suppHed with 
troops to carry it out, it is my belief, knowing as I 
do McClellan's Army of the Potomac, that they 
would have been thrown back as Lee was thrown 
back in 1862 and 1863; for the fates had decided, 
as the war as it went on showed, that no Confederate 
army should stay long north of the river that flows 
by Mount Vernon. 

There are side lights in the background of this 
famous interview which help to illuminate it. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 155 

The highest flaming one was the fact that the 
victory of Bull Run, supplementing the surrender 
of Fort Sumter like a south wind to a plum tree, 
brought Beauregard into a full bloom of military 
glory; and as the election of a permanent President 
was approaching, politics had begun her usual 
game. Beauregard's biographer, a member of his 
staff, says: ''Gentlemen of position and influence 
outside of the Army now urged him to allow his 
name to be presented." Jones, in his ''Rebel War 
Clerk's Diary Notes" says: "The battle of Manassas 
made everybody popular and especially General 
Beauregard. If he were a candidate, I am pretty 
sure he would be elected." 

Davis had asked him for his report of the battle 
early in August, but up to the time of the interview, 
he had not handed it in, although when submitted, 
October 18, it appeared to have been finished on 
August 26. 

It is a shabby, a despicable thing for a biographer 
to ascribe malicious motives for the conduct of his 
hero's enemies; and, so far as I can, I wish to avoid 
it; but is it unreasonable to ask, in view of the 
persistent criticism and innuendoes of Davis by 
Beauregard's friends throughout the war, why 
did he hold back his report with its indirect, yet 
damaging, charges? And, may I ask, was it strange 
that Davis should feel hurt when he saw it? Beaure- 
gard's biographer says it was held back that he 



156 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

might get the benefit of Northern accounts of the 
battle. But however this may be, the belated report 
began with a preliminary statement to the effect 
that before the battle of Bull Run he had sent one 
of his staff to Davis with a plan for the defeat of 
McDowell's Army and the capture of Washington, 
which Davis had unqualifiedly disapproved. 

The charge of Davis' responsibility for the failure 
to capture Washington after Bull Run, that had 
begun as a whisper, suddenly broke aloud as a fact 
by a speech made to Congress by one of its members, 
who had been a volunteer aide on Beauregard's 
staff at the time of the battle. Davis could not 
stand this unfair, baseless charge and had to clear 
himself from its damaging imputation; for it was 
not only poisoning public opinion, but was also 
undermining the administration's power to carry 
on the war. Therefore on October 30 he wrote 
Beauregard: ''Yesterday my attention was called 
to various newspaper publications purporting to 
have been sent from Manassas and to be a synoposis 
of your report, in which it is represented that 
you had been overruled by me in your plan for a 
battle with the enemy south of the Potomac for the 
capture of Baltimore and Washington." 

A few days later he wrote Johnston: ''Reports 
have been and are very widely circulated to the 
effect that I prevented General Beaiu"egard from 
pursuing the enemy after the battle of Manassas, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 157 

and had subsequently restrained him from advancing 
upon Washington City. I call upon you as the 
commanding general and as a party to all the 
conferences on the twenty-second and twenty-third 
of July, to say whether or not I obstructed the 
pursuit of the enemy after the victory at Manassas, 
or have ever objected to an advance or other active 
operations which it was feasible to undertake." 

Beauregard exonerated him from the charge of 
the responsibihty for not pursuing McDowell, and 
so did Johnston but in his answer said: ''After 
a conference at Fairfax Com't House with the three 
senior general officers, you avowed it to be impractic- 
able to give this Army the strength which these 
officers considered necessary to enable it to assume 
the offensive, upon which I drew back to its present 
position (Centreville)." 

Here then at last are the leading circumstances 
of the break of mutual confidence between Davis, 
Beauregard and Johnston. Sooner or later, as the 
outcome of it all, every politician that had failed 
to get an appointment in the Army for himself or a 
friend, every army contractor that had been thwarted 
in his greed, every Senator, Congressman, or Governor 
that had a grievance, every editor and reporter 
that had been snubbed by any member of the 
Cabinet — all joined in the ranks behind the 
champions of Johnston or Beauregard as the war 
went on, attributing defeat to Davis, and when the 



158 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Confederacy fell, laid its death on his shoulders. 
A few Southern and practically all Northern histo- 
rians have in a measure sustained this verdict; 
many of the Northern, thoroughly convinced that 
he was bad in every way, were only too glad to 
help load him down with the failure of the South. 

Let me say in conclusion of this prolonged and 
possibly wearying account, that I think the pre- 
ponderance of evidence is in favor of Davis in this 
controversy and that the spirit of the dead 
Confederacy does not hold him responsible for her 
failure, on the contrary, glories in his constancy and 
love of her. 

But I do think Davis made a great mistake in 
going to Manassas. A battlefield is no place for a 
President, a Kaiser, or a King. They do not 
help, they only embarrass the Commander. More- 
over, had he stayed in Richmond, Johnston and 
Beauregard would have, in all probability through 
their failure to pursue McDowell, gone into a 
perpetual echpse, and Lee, Davis' ever loyal helper, 
would have come into his own that much sooner. 



CHAPTER XVII 

That first year of the Confederacy, whose morning 
broke with such glowing enthusiasm and whose first 
summer was so brightened for Davis and the people 
of the South by the victory of Bull Run, had, never- 
theless, before its sun set, brought to him and them 
a sore disappointment. He had hoped, and they 
were sure, that the nations of the Old World would 
at once reach out the hand of welcome; for was not 
Cotton a king that would throw the doors wide 
open of every country with mills filled with looms 
or spindles. But to his and their surprise the Con- 
federate ambassadors who had been received with 
warmly gracious formalities, soon discovered an 
hesitation, if not a latent unwillingness, to acknowl- 
edge the independence of the South. Day after 
day and week after week they plead for recognition; 
to this end they held out tempting commercial 
advantages, they appealed to the Englishman's 
hereditary notion of the right to be free, they used 
every argument, but all fell on deaf ears and they 
soon reahzed, what they had not surmised, that 
Vice-President Stephens, in declaring that the 
cornerstone of the Confederacy was slavery, had 
dealt a blow which aroused a sentiment more power- 
ful than King Cotton. 

159 



160 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

It is one of the curious episodes of history that 
that little, pale, pathetic-looking man who had 
opposed secession, and in his heart worshipped the 
old Union, raised a ghost that could not be laid 
and that dragged the Confederacy dovm to its 
grave. 

In the autumn the seizure of the Confederate am- 
bassadors, Slidell and Mason, from the deck of the 
British steamer Trent, by that ''I'll show you," 
spare-faced old Commodore, Wilkes, for a moment 
raised the hopes of the South; but Seward with his 
cool adroitness released them from Fort Warren, 
delivered them to an English man-of-war, and thus 
blew out that hope like a candle. Although dis- 
appointed, the South did not despair of England 
coming at last to her aid, for she was bound to 
realize that, if victorious, the North in due time 
would be her inveterate rival on the seas. Cotton 
was still an illusion, as well as that other fatal 
illusion, that the North lacked courage and would 
not fight long. This last illusion Davis did not 
share with his southern countrymen; from the very 
first he knew the indomitable resolution of the 
North, and all that autumn never relaxed a moment 
in preparation for the coming spring's campaigns. 

In September his first Secretary of War, Walker, 
who had had no experience that aided him in his 
trying difficulties and immense labors, for the sake 
of health of body and peace of mind, resigned his 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 161 

position. He wrote Davis this letter: ''In with- 
drawing from your Cabinet I can, I feel assured, 
without any impeachment of my motives, say to 
you in writing what I have often said of you; that 
you were the only man I had ever met whose great- 
ness grew upon me the nearer I approached him, 
and whose rare fideUty to principle often wounded 
when he most preferred to oblige." Walker's 
friends said that he was a brave, impulsive man 
and this letter shows it. 

Davis appointed Benjamin in Walker's place, 
and before the year ended he had snubbed the 
Senate and made a host of enemies in and out of 
the Army. For, born with a contempt for military 
self-importance, and wearing that air, which success- 
ful Jews so often wear, of marching to the music of a 
triumph, his face always wreathed in smiUng con- 
descension and with manners invariably formal, did 
not inspire or encourage intimacy. And yet he was 
universally credited by friend and foe with natural 
and developed abilities far surpassing any one in 
Congress or the Cabinet, and thus this marked 
personality, together with the fact that he was a 
Hebrew, made him the target of violent anti- 
administration newspaper attacks. But between 
him and Davis there never was a break of friendship 
or confidence. 

Only those who have had experience in staff 
departments can know or conceive the work that 



162 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Benjamin and Davis had to do that first year of 
the war in organizing, providing supphes for the 
army they were creating, and the innumerable per- 
plexing questions from contractors, manufacturers, 
and governors of States that poured in by every 
mail and by telegraph almost every hour. To plan 
and to answer those questions they had to work all 
day and long into the late hours of every night, but 
the next morning Benjamin greeted the public with 
the same alert smile and lofty manner, and Davis 
with the same dignified courtesy and air of uncon- 
querable will. 

Toombs, restless in his position of Secretary of 
State and longing for the field of action as soon as 
the guns opened at Bull Run, resigned and Davis 
appointed Hunter of Virginia in his place. Nature 
had built Toombs on a large scale mentally and 
physically. He was over six feet in height, had 
depth and force of character. His eyes were large, 
black and flashing, he dressed well and kept his 
small, delicate hands with the care of a woman. 
He loved stimulating, joyous, good-hearted com- 
pany, as well as that, from time to time, unfortun- 
ately, of the cup. His temper was quick but his 
judgment, when evoked by serious questions, calm 
and sure. Before the year ended he had joined 
Wise, Floyd, Clingman, Cobb, and other civilians 
craving for military glory in dislike of Davis who 
had appointed West Point men over and ahead of 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 163 

them. At one of the early steps we took in this 
biography, we referred to this very attendant dis- 
advantage of a West Point education. 

Poor CHngman! One of the most disappointed, one 
of Davis' earhest, most persistent and virulent critics, 
I never think of without pity. While in the Senate 
he had had his portrait painted as addressing that 
body, and Corcoran, the Washington banker and 
famous art critic, had hung it in his gallery among 
presidents, senators, judges and generals. After 
the war was long over, Clingman in old age and 
utter poverty, his coat shiny and threadbare, his 
hair white, long was in the habit of going to the 
gallery and gazing on his portrait. One day, to his 
surprise, the portrait had been moved and he asked 
a stranger. ''Why do you suppose they placed it 
here in this dark room?" "Oh, it is probably just a 
temporary change." " I do hope it is," he murmured, 
his lips trembling and the tears springing out of 
his eyes. Oh, that look back upon other days! 

It will be remembered^ that Davis had assigned 
his boyhood and West Point friend, Albert Sydney 
Johnston, to the command of the Department of 
the West. Its frontier extended from the Allegheny 
Mountains to the western boundary of Arkansas. 
It was a long line pierced by the Mississippi, the 
Cumberland and the Tennessee, each offering the 
aid of iron-clad gunboats to forces making an 
attack. In front of Johnston was his old West Point 



164 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

roommate Anderson of Sumter, Grant, Thomas and 
Sherman with stronger forces than he had and 
much better armed — indeed many of his soldiers 
had only converted rifles and shotguns. Conscious 
of this inferiority and realizing its dangers he had 
repeatedly called for better arms and equipment. 
The War Department had told him the truth — 
that none were to be had. This he could not make 
public and had to lie idle, knowing full well that an 
idle army, not only breeds contagious diseases, 
unnerves morale, and weakens confidence in its 
commander, but it breeds distrust in that mighty 
shape called public opinion. He was troubled and 
worried day and night, but he found no fault with 
Davis, for he was sure his boyhood friend thought 
of him and would do all he could to enable him to 
take the offensive. 

Meanwhile, although McClellan's immense army 
lay idle, yet such was the charm of his personality 
together with his well staged, frequent reviews, 
it neither suffered from disease nor distrust, its 
rank and file waiting in perfect confidence that he 
would in his own good time lead them to victory. 

But the cool-headed North had no illusions as 
to him nor to chance; all day and all night its looms, 
its foundries, its ammunition- and gun-making 
establishments and its powder mills were busy. 
And so were its numerous shipyards. Through the 
dead hours of the night they clanged with the 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 165 

riveting of boilers for men-of-war, forging plates 
for iron-clad gunboats and for the turret of the 
little Monitor dreaming with a smile of its coming 
battle with the huge Merrimac. Moreover an 
expedition of land and sea forces had sailed to attack 
Roanoke Island; another under Farragut was 
about to sail for the capture of New Orleans, and 
Grant was waiting for Halleck's authority to fall 
on Johnston's line. 

Such then was the situation and the prospect that 
lay before Davis at the end of the first year. There 
can be no doubt that he was conscious he had made 
enemies, of the loss and weakness that came to him 
through the abandonment of his Cabinet by one 
of the most powerful leaders of the South, of the 
mighty dangers that hung over its armies. Yet, 
and notwithstanding, his courage faltered not. The 
spirit of the youthful-browed and aspiring Con- 
federacy, that spirit that inspired poetry, built 
monuments, brought tears of affection, was at his 
side, for she knew right well that within his breast 
were a will and devotion that would never quail, 
and that would carry her banner on many a vic- 
torious field and would never forsake her. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Davis' second year had barely begun when a 
storm of defeat set in that swept the entire northern 
frontier of the South. On January 19 that loyal 
Virginian, Thomas, who looked like, and by nature 
was more like, Washington than any other man of 
his day, broke Albert Sydney Johnston's line at 
Mill Springs, Eastern Kentucky. Grant, on Feb- 
ruary 6, broke it at Fort Henry on the Tennessee, 
and ten days after, at Fort Donelson on the Cumber- 
land, capturing both garrisons, many guns and 
prisoners; Curtis broke it on March 5 at Elkhorn, 
amid the wild turkey-roamed and white oak- 
covered hills of Southwestern Missouri. Meanwhile 
Burnside had captured Roanoke Island just below 
the Virginia line on the coast of North Carolina. 
Some years after the war Benjamin in a letter to 
Colonel Charles Marshall, Lee's confidential aide, 
said in reference to the fall of Roanoke Island and 
the loss of Fort Donelson, for which the Confederate 
Congress by the report of a Committee found him 
responsible: ''I consulted the President [Davis] 
whether or not it was best for the country that I 
should reveal to a Congressional Committee our 
poverty and my utter inability to supply the requisi- 

166 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 167 

tions of Wise [in command of Roanoke Island] and 
thus run the risk that the fact should become known 
to some of the spies of the enemy, of whose acti- 
vities we were well assured. It was thought best 
for the public interest that I should submit to 
censure." 

The weakness and final rupture of Johnston's 
lines were in a great measure due to the lack of arms 
and ammunition — a fact that neither he nor Davis 
could let the world know. 

These were all bad blows and the effect on the 
public mind was staggering. But the one that 
struck nearest the heart was the fall of Donelson 
on the sixteenth of February. The news of this 
supreme disaster reached Richmond while the 
workmen were engaged in building a platform in 
front of Clark's celebrated equestrian statue of 
Washington, for the inauguration of Davis on the 
twenty-second as permanent President of the Con- 
federacy. To add to the gloom of the forenoon of 
the twenty-second, a day that had been looked 
forward to as a day of sunlight, pomp and pride 
and for which great preparations had been made, 
the clouds that had gathered in the night and been 
hanging gray and lowering began to rain. Davis 
read his inaugural to an uncomfortable, cast-down 
audience under dripping umbrellas. In the course 
of his address he said: ''At the darkest hour of your 
struggle the provisional gives place to the permanent 



168 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

government. After a series of successes and victories 
which covered our arms with glory we have recently- 
met with serious disasters. But in the heart of a 
people resolved to be free, these disasters tend 
but to stimulate to increased resistance." With 
uplifted hands and face, he closed as follows: ''My 
hope is reverently fixed on Him whose favor is 
ever vouchsafed to the cause which is just. With 
humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging 
the Providence which has so visibly protected the 
Confederacy during its brief but eventful career, 
to Thee, God, I trustingly commit myself, and 
prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country 
and its cause." I have never stood where he stood 
that rain-poiu-ing day and looked up without a 
strange feeling coming over me; for Washington's 
drawn sword is pointed directly toward Appomattox 
and his horse, with nervous pointed ears and staring 
eyes, is looking full in the same direction as if filled 
with prophetic terror. 

Donelson having fallen opening the way to 
Nashville and Northern Alabama, Johnston had to 
draw back his lines, abandon Kentucky and give 
up Nashville itself, where stores had been gathered 
and industries for the manufacture of suppUes 
gotten under way. Tliis turn of affairs was so 
sudden, unexpected, and mortifying that all of 
Middle and Western Tennessee and the people of 
Kentucky, who had thrown their future with the 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 169 

South, broke into fury; their Senators and Congress- 
men marched in a body to see Davis and poured out 
their boiling indignation over Johnston's manage- 
ment, demanding that he give them a General. 

Davis listened to them with a pained heart; he 
could not tell them why Johnston had not had 
men enough to hold his Hne, or why Wise had not 
been able to hold Roanoke Island, but said that 
if Johnston was not a General he did not know 
where to find one. This was little comfort in the 
interview with Davis for the Congressional dele- 
gation; and we have no doubt that that night he 
and his Administration were criticised most severely 
in Richmond's taverns, lobbies of hotels, clubs, 
and newspaper offices. 

Davis wrote Johnston a long letter: "My dear 
General: We have suffered great anxiety because 
of recent events in Kentucky and Tennessee, and 
I have been not a little disturbed by the repetition 
of reflections on yourself. In the meantime I have 
made you such defense as friendship prompted 
and many years of aquaintance justified." It then 
went on to say that he was in need of facts to rebut 
the wholesale condemnation not only of Johnston 
but also of the administration itself, and that 
the adverse commxent meanwhile was undermining 
public reliance. 

"I respect the generosity which has kept you 



170 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

silent, but would impress upon you that the question 
is not personal but public in its nature, that you 
and I might be content to suffer, but neither of us 
can willingly permit detriment to the country. 

With the confidence and regard of many years, 
I am truly yo7jr friend, 

Jefferson Davis" 

To this Johnston replied: "I anticipated all 
that you have told me as to the censure that the 
fall of Donelson drew upon me and the attacks to 
which you might be subjected;" and then goes 
on to give the facts before and after its fall, ending 
feelingly his long letter thus: ''The test of merit 
in my profession, with the people, is success. It 
is a hard rule, but I think it is right. Your friend, 

A. S. Johnston." 

Davis wrote back: "My dear General: Yours 
of the sixteenth is just received. I have read it 
with much satisfaction. So far as the past is con- 
cerned, it but confirms the conclusions at which I 
had already arrived. My confidence in you has 
never wavered. I hope the public will soon give 
me credit for my judgment [he had approved plans 
by Johnston for attack on Grant] rather than to 
arraign me for obstinacy. May God bless you is 
the sincere prayer of your friend, 

Jefferson Davis." 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 171 

Johnston's plans were the assembhng of an 
army at Corinth and falling on Grant before Buell 
could join him. The battle of Shiloh took place 
on Sunday, April 6, and just as Johnston had broken 
the center arch of Grant's line and victory was in 
his grasp, a chance musket ball cut his femoral 
artery and with the loss of blood he was lifted from 
his horse and had hardly touched the ground when 
he drew his last breath. 

Beauregard succeeded Johnston, and the weight 
of the testimony seems to be that he threw away 
the victory. ''One more lunge and Grant was gone. 
One more hour for Johnston in the saddle, " said a 
Confederate General, ''and the Confederate States 
would, in all probability, have taken their place 
at the Council Board of the Nations of the Earth." 

Davis in a message to Congress two days after 
Johnston's death said: "Without doing injustice to 
the living it may be safely asserted that our loss is 
irreparable; and among the shining hosts of the 
great and good who now cluster around the banner 
of our country, there waits no purer spirit, no more 
heroic soul than that of the illustrious man whose 
death I .join you in lamenting. He rode on to the 
accomplishment of his object forgetful of self, 
while his very life blood was fast ebbing away. 
His last breath cheered his comrades to victory. 
The last sound he heard was their shout of triumph. 
His last thought was his country's, and long and 



172 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

deeply will his country mourn his loss." Oh, the 
friendships of boyhood! And one of the charms in 
Davis for me is that they stayed green until he died. 

Johnston's body was taken to New Orleans and 
had barely reached there when the city fell under 
the indomitable Southern-born Farragut, closing 
the door of recognition of the Confederacy by that 
most brilUant and most incomprehensible of all 
nations — France. 

Meanwhile McClellan, under the pressure of 
public opinion which Grant's exploits in the West 
had stirred up demanding movement on his part, 
in March transferred his Army from in front of 
Washington to in front of Yorktown; Joseph E. 
Johnston, his very Uke opponent in some ways, 
was holding him there, the peach trees in bloom 
and the red-winged blackbirds warbling along their 
fortifying hues. 

In the midst of all this disappointment, anxiety, 
and labor, Davis received a confidential letter 
from a friend. Honorable W. M. Brooks of Macon, 
Alabama, telling him of the adverse criticism going 
on as to himself and his administration. Davis 
in reply said: ''I acknowledge the error of my 
attempt to defend all of the frontier, sea-coast and 
inland, but will say in justification that if we had 
received the arms and munitions which we had good 
reason to expect, the attempt would have been 
successful and the battlefields would have been 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 173 

on the enemy's soil. Without miHtary stores, 
without workshops to create them, without the 
power to import them, necessity, not choice, has 
compelled us to occupy strong positions. The 
country has supposed our armies more numerous 
than they are and our munitions more extensive 
than they have been. I have borne reproach in 
silence because to reply by an exact statement of 
facts would have exposed our weakness. Your 
estimate of me I hope assured you that I would 
not, as stated, treat the Secretary of War 'as a mere 
clerk,' and if you knew Mr. Benjamin you would 
realize the impossibiHty of his submitting to degrada- 
tion at the hands of any one . . . Against the 
unfounded story that I keep the Generals in leading 
strings may be set the frequent complaints that I 
do not arraign them for what is regarded as their 
, failures or misdeeds, and do not respond to the 
popular clamor by displacing Commanders upon 
irresponsible statements. You cite the cases of 
Johnston and Beauregard, but you have the story 
nomine mutata, and though Johnston was offended 
because of his relative rank, he certainly never 
thought of resigning, and General Beauregard in a 
portion of his report, which I understand the 
Congress refused to publish, made a statement for 
which I asked his authority, but it is surely a slander 
on him to say that he ever considered himself 
insulted by me. 



174 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

If, as you inform me, it is credibly said that I have 
scarcely a friend and not a defender in Congress or 
the Army, yet for the sake of the country and its 
cause, I must hope it is falsely said. " As to appoint- 
ments in the Army, he closed this long and what 
must have been to him a painful letter: ''I have 
endeavored to avoid bad selections by relying on 
military rather than on political recommendations. " 

Mr. Lincoln did not follow this course; in appoint- 
ing Generals he was much wiser. What if they 
should lose a few battles? Was it not better to 
have them fighting the ''rebels" than fighting his 
Administration? And were they not much less 
harmful strutting around with feathers in their 
hats and big spurs on their heels than haranguing 
conventions and inflaming the press against him? 
Davis never knew how to play the political game; 
Nature had not built him that way. From his 
youth up and on to the end he faced his fellow-men 
with the same look of dignified respect and sincerity 
without a suggestion of premeditated caution. 

At last McClellan got his Army within hearing 
of the church bells of Richmond, and Davis, realizing 
that a crisis was at hand, recalled Lee from 
Charleston, and when Johnston was wounded at 
Seven Pines, put him in supreme command. 

Then, as with a magic hand, the clouds that 
hung over Davis and over Richmond, were swept 
away. McClellan's star, that had blazed, entered 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 175 

and Lee's star emerged, from a mist. Those seven 
days' battles, beginning among the timbered swamps 
of the Chickahominy and ending on Malvern Hill 
overlooking the James, were hard-fought and the 
losses were great. Davis could not keep away 
from them and Lee had to caution him not to expose 
himself. 

Here let me pay a tribute to the steadfast, heroic 
old Army of the Potomac with whose colors I served. 
Never did an army show more courage than she 
in defending the lines of Gaines' Mill or the fields of 
Glendale and Malvern Hill on retreat! My heart 
beats with pride as I recall the conduct of my 
instructor Alexander S. Webb and my fellow cadet 
friends at West Point, Randol, Kirby, Gushing, 
"Nick" Bowen, Custer, and many others. Sweet, 
sweet are your memories, oh gallant friends of my 
youth. 

My sense of the path a biography should follow 
warns me not to yield to the witcheries of battle- 
fields; but there is one event connected with 
Stonewall Jackson that I heard from the lips of my 
friend E. Porter Alexander, which can be found in 
his most interesting book, ''The Memories of a 
Confederate Staff Officer," and one about Lincoln 
which can be found in McDowell's report of his 
countermanded movement from Fredericksburg to 
join McGlellan just before Lee's attack, that I 
cannot resist: 



176 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

McClellan's right having been smashed in, he 
j&rst withdrew across the Chickahominy and then 
White Oak Swamp and there stood at bay while 
his vast trains made their way to the James. Lee 
set out in pm^suit, but when Jackson reached White 
Oak Swamp, he sat down; it was Sunday and he 
made httle or no attempt to cross. Hampton, after 
making an examination of the swamp and finding an 
easy and feasible way to cross it and attack, sought 
Jackson and found him sitting alone on a fallen 
pine tree and told him what he had discovered, but 
Jackson, probably praying, only pulled his cap 
lower over his closed eyes and said nothing. Alexander 
attributed his idleness to his desire to keep holy 
the Sabbath day. Owing to his after brilliant 
exploits, Lee nor Davis ever found fault with him, 
although it is generally conceded that had he shown 
the vigor which had characterized his movements 
in the Valley, McClellan's Army could not have 
escaped destruction. That Davis and Lee were 
both disappointed in Jackson and had exchanged 
frank views of his failure, is indicated by the follow- 
ing extract from a letter Lee wrote to Davis October 
2, after Antietam: ''My opinion of the merits 
of Jackson has been greatly enhanced during this 
expedition. He is true, honest, and brave, and has 
a single eye to the good of the service and spares 
no exertion to accompHsh his object." 

The other incident is this: McDowell's order to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 177 

move from Fredericksburg with some twenty-five 
thousand men and join McClellan, reached him on 
a Sunday morning. Now it so happened that 
Lincoln was on a visit to him and thought he had 
better not set out, as God would probably be on the 
side of him who kept the day holy. 

Here are the two characters, Lincoln and Stonewall 
Jackson, very, very unlike, as unhke as the violet 
evoking south wind of an April morning is to 
the shivering cold blast of a winter day — both 
under the swaying awe of the same mystery! Surely 
there are depths in human nature where traits 
linger that we little dream of, yet when revealed 
how potent, how intrinsically interesting, and how 
they live on, at least with me, let immortal deeds 
and sayings overshadow them as they may. 

One or two more things before we leave the battle- 
fields around Richmond. Mrs. Davis had gone to 
Raleigh, North Carohna, with the children, and 
here are a few extracts from letters Davis wrote her: 

''You will have seen a notice of the destruction 
of our home. If our cause succeeds, we shall not 
mourn over our personal deprivations; if it should 
not, why 'the deluge'. I hope we shall be able to 
provide for the comfort of the old negroes. " 

"I packed some valuable books, and the sword I 
wore for many years together with the pistols used 
at Monterey and Buena Vista. These articles will have 



178 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

a value to the boys in after time, and to you now. " 
When he heard that the youngest child was at 
the point of death he wrote: ''My heart sank within 
me at the news of the suffering of my angel baby. 
Your telegram gives assurance of the subsidence 
of the disease. But the look of pain and exhaustion, 
the gentle complaint 'I am tired' which has for so 
many years oppressed me seems to have been 
revived, and unless God spares me another such 
trial, what is to become of me, I don't know. " 

One thing more: Of course McClellan had to 
abandon thousands of his sick and wounded, and 
a surgeon who had remained in charge of them 
wrote to Lee telling him of their wants and sufferings. 
Lee at once wrote as follows: ''I regret to hear 
of the extreme suffering of the sick and wounded 
Federal prisoners who have fallen into our hands. 
I will do all that lies in my power to alleviate their 
sufferings. I will have steps taken to give you every 
facility in transporting them to Savage Station. 
I am willing to release the sick and wounded on 
parole, not to bear arms until regularly exchanged." 
That letter was written on the fourth of July, 
a worthy celebration of the day, and it is a deed 
like that which accounts for the Nation's pride in 
Lee. And now, in contrast to that despatch, 
Beauregard in that same year sent to his friend 
Miles in the Confederate Congress: ''Has bill for 
execution of abolition prisoners after January 1 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 179 

been passed? Do it and England will be stirred 
into action. It is high time to proclaim the black 
flag for that period. Let the execution be with the 
garrote. 

P. T. Beauregard." 

What a dispatch! When this life is over it may 
be that we pass through a blessed stream which 
washes away all desire for cruelty and vengeance, 
at least I hope so 

Lee next attacked Pope, who was marching an 
army southward through Culpeper. Pope was a 
handsome man and at heart kindly, but after an 
interview with Stanton, who despised McClellan 
and was most bitter toward the South, he issued 
manifestoes provoking the Army under McClellan 
and authorizing severe treatment of non-combatants 
of the territory he was operating in. Complaints of 
atrocities poured in to Davis, and he wrote to Lee 
that he was issuing an order denying the customary 
treatment of exchange of prisoners of war to Pope 
and his officers, saying: "For the present we renounce 
our right of retaliation on the innocent and shall 
continue to treat the private enlisted soldiers of 
General Pope's army as prisoners of war," and that 
if any hostages in the hands of Pope should be 
executed, a like number drawn from commissioned 
officers would meet the same fate. ''While these 
facts," he concluded, ''would justify our refusal 



180 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to execute the generous cartel by which we have 
consented to Uberate an excess of thousands of 
prisoners held by us beyond the number held by 
the enemy, a sacred regard for plighted faith shrinks 
from the mere semblance of breaking a promise 
and prevents any resort to this extremity. Nor 
do we desire to extend to any other forces of the 
enemy the punishment merited alone by General 
Pope and such commissioned officers as chose to 
participate in the execution of his infamous orders, " 

If we bear in mind the natural and inevitable 
feeling of hate that was bound to follow in the 
territory invaded, and the heartless destruction of 
property and the outrageous crimes committed by 
stragglers, it is easy to see how Davis was driven 
by public opinion to promulgate the orders he did. 
Nevertheless, they accomplished little or no good; 
in fact, they only gave the North an excuse for not 
carrying out the cartel, thereby prolonging the 
duration of imprisonment with its increasing low 
spirits and accompanying fatal diseases. The saddest 
part of it all was that the truly brave had to suffer 
for the conduct of the cowardly stragglers. 

About this time, too, a Federal officer in Missouri, 
where a most savage state of partisan murder 
reigned, took nine Confederate prisoners and shot 
them, so it was charged, in violation of the laws of 
war. Newspapers called for revenge, and it was 
proposed in Davis' Cabinet that a like number 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 181 

should be drawn from Libby Prison in Richmond and 
executed. Davis said: ''No, I have not the heart 
to take innocent soldiers, taken in honorable war, 
and hang them like convicted criminals." This, 
and like repeated examples of Davis' freedom from 
vindictiveness, the hardest-faced of all human 
frailties, will appeal, I know, to the reader's brave 
heart. 

It will be remembered that Pope met with a most 
disastrous, overwhelming defeat; that Lee invaded 
Maryland and that Lincoln begged McClellan to 
resume command of his old Army of the Potomac, 
and that at Antietam he fought a desperate battle 
with Lee, forcing him to withdraw into Virginia. 
That most sanguinary of battles, on the roUing 
fields that cradle the winding Antietam Creek, in 
one way has been made more famous than any other 
field of the war; in this, that Lincoln, in the silence 
of meditation, had promised himself that if victory 
should come after all of Pope's disheartening defeats, 
he would issue an Emancipation Proclamation. 
The same spirit of religious awe that was with him 
at Fredericksburg, when he suggested to McDowell 
that the holy day be kept, was with him still; 
indeed, from his youth up he passed, as the world 
well knows, many an hour on that border land where 
melancholy and mystery make their home. He 
doubted the constitutionality of the act; he was 
not sure that as a war measure it would prove 



182 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

effective; he was ready, as his letter to Greely shows, 
to continue slavery if that would save the Union, 
but with the guns of Antietam, he was on that 
borderland of mystery and heard the voices of the 
ages. 

On Davis, and the South generally, the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation had no effect; with him and with 
the Army it only welded them into closer union 
and substituted the defense of home and the right 
to be free for mere political doctrine and vainglory. 
Moreover, whatsoever its increase of menace to 
the domestic life of the South and moral advantage 
to the cause of the North, all was more than counter- 
balanced by the almost simultaneous speech of 
Gladstone at Newcastle, in which he said: *'We 
know quite well that the people of the Northern 
States have not yet drunk of the cup — they are 
still trying to hold it far from their lips — which 
all the rest of the world see they, nevertheless, 
must drink of. We may have our own opinions 
about slavery; we may be for or against the 
South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis, 
and other leaders of the South, have made an 
army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and 
they have made what is more than either — they 
have made a nation." 

We all know how that great man repented of this 
speech, but little can we fully realize what joy it 
was to the South: they saw England reaching out 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 183 

her hand and peace blessing then- land and homes. 
To add to the fervor of their hopes, in December, 
Burnside who had supplanted that disappointing 
child of fortune, McClellan, attacked Lee at 
Fredericksburg, met with a most bloody repulse 
and was saved from destruction by a kindly fog, 
underneath whose gray folds the poor old bleeding 
Army of the Potomac regained the hills of Stafford 
on the north side of the Rappahannock. 

Davis at the time, anxious about affairs in the 
Southwest, had gone thither to get information at 
first hand from the officers commanding the Armies 
and from the people at home, and above all, to 
show them that their interests and welfare were in 
his mind as well as that of Virginia and the East. 

While on this trip he addressed the Legislature of 
Mississippi, in the course of which he said relative 
to provisions for the support of families in poor 
circumstances: ''Let the provisions be made for 
the objects of his affection and his soHcitude, and 
the soldier engaged in fighting the battles of his 
country will no longer be disturbed in his slumbers 
by dreams of an unprotected and neglected family 
at home. Let him know that Mississippi has spread 
her protecting mantle over those he loves and he 
will be ready to fight your battles, to protect your 
honor, and in your cause to die." 

The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on the 
«fif teen 111 of December and gave Davis a happy 



184 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Christmas, but it was the last happy one in the 
life of the Confederacy and I think for him, too; 
for on New Year's day. General Bragg was defeated 
at Stone River, Tennessee, by the valiant troops 
whose fathers were the pioneers of the West and 
who had all the courage and intrepid initiative of 
the South. 

In connection with this battle there is a cir- 
cumstance that may be worth mentioning, showing, 
as it does, the sudden turn of the wheel of fortune 
for Davis and the South. When the first day was 
over there came a despatch from Bragg to him 
claiming a great victory, and two days after came 
another — a story of defeat. The same thing 
happened at Shiloh, at Chickamauga, and at 
Gettysburg. These abrupt changes of the tide 
must have been trying, but Davis, as a boy, had 
read " Pilgrim's Progress," and as these victories 
turned to defeat, we have little doubt that like 
Great Heart he bore on toward, what to him, was, 
the House Beautiful and the bells that were ringing 
in the Celestial City to welcome the Pilgrim at 
last — the independence of the Confederacy. 



CHAPTER XIX 

It is with some feeling that we enter upon the 
events in Davis' life that marked the third year of 
his administration; for that year we met the Army 
of Northern Virginia at Chancellorsville and at 
Gettysburg — I can hear the guns to this day — 
and many warm friends of my cadet days, some in 
blue and some in gray, were killed in these battles; 
and it is with tenderness, too, I recall the dead 
bodies of the gallant Confederates that strewed the 
field of Gettysburg. 

It was in early May. The azaleas, the violets and 
the dogwood were in bloom, when we fought the 
battle of Chancellorsville. Never was that old Army 
of the Potomac worse led or worse handled; and 
never, too, did Lee show more audacity or brilliant 
generalship. The world, however, has forgotten 
Hooker's failures and Lee's successes, and only 
remembers Chancellorsville as the last battlefield 
of Stonewall Jackson. Twilight had just given way 
to darkness; a full moon was just clearing the tree- 
tops when he fell from the fire of his own men. He 
lived for a few days — till the eleventh — and then, 
as Death laid his cold hand on him, he murmured, 

185 



186 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

''Let us pass over the river and rest in the shade of 
the trees." 

Our old Army retreated back to the hills of 
Stafford. On the day of Stonewall's funeral the 
Confederate bands played a dirge at retreat; our 
bands heard them and played a responsive dirge. 
I never think of that chivalrous rejoinder without 
a flush of soldier pride. 

On the death of Stonewall, Davis wrote Lee: 

"A great calamity has befallen us, and I sympathize 
with the sorrow you feel and the embarrassment 
you must experience. The announcement of the 
death of General Jackson followed frequent assur- 
ances that he was doing well. And though the loss 
was one which would be deeply felt under any 
circumstances, the shock was increased by its 
suddenness. 

There is sincere mourning here and it will extend 
throughout the land as the intelligence is received. 
Your friend, 

Jefferson Davis." 

Lee wrote to Jeb Stuart the day after Jackson's 
death: ''I regret to inform you that the great and 
good Jackson is no more. He died yesterday, May 
10, at 3.15 p.m., of pneumonia — calm, serene and 
happy. May his spirit pervade our whole army. 
Our country will then be secure." No, no, General 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 187 

Lee; Jackson could not have saved your Confed- 
eracy. He would have won you new victories, 
doubtless, but the North with its vast resources 
was sure to win the final battlefield. 

Meanwhile, on the seventh, Lee wrote to Davis: 
''There are many things about which I would like 
to consult your Excellency, [Lee never broke 
through formality with Davis or any other living 
being.] and I should be delighted, if your health 
and convenience suited, if you could visit the army. 
[Davis was far from well all that summer.] "l learn 
today that the remaining eye of the President is 
failing . . . is in a very feeble and nervous condition, 
and he is really threatened with the loss of sight 
altogether." — Rebel War Clerk Jones, in his Diary.] 

General Lee went on to say: ''I could get you a 
comfortable room in the vicinity of my headquarters, 
and I know you would be content with our camp fare. 
Hoping that your health is entirely restored, and 
that you will be attended with every success and 
happiness." 

On the twentieth Lee wrote to Davis: "1 cannot 
express the concern I feel at leaving you in such 
feeble health, [He had just been to Jackson's 
funeral.] with so many anxious thoughts for the 
welfare of the whole Confederacy weighing upon 
your mind. I pray that a kind Providence will give 
you strength to bear the weight of care." 

The anxious thought that was weighing on Davis' 



188 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

mind was the fate of Vicksbiirg; at that very hour 
Grant was crossing the Big Black, driving Pemberton 
into and encirchng his works. Meanwhile Joseph E. 
Johnston, who had been sent to relieve Pemberton 
and extract him, if possible, from ruin, was sending 
vague and discouraging messages to Davis. 

Johnston may have been — what many of his friends 
estimated him to be — a gi-eat soldier; acquaintances 
of mine, who knew him intimately, were fond of 
him; but if there be in all his military correspondence 
a line or a word breathing confidence and hope I 
have failed to see it. Perhaps Davis did not have 
patience enough with him, but Lincoln had to relieve 
McClellan at last; and for the same reasons that 
Davis had to relieve Johnston — the failure to 
accomplish results. 

On the thirty-first of May, 1863, Davis, in a long 
letter to Lee about troubles in Mississippi, North 
Carolina and Tennessee, and threatening movements 
on Richmond from the line of the York and the James, 
said: ''General Johnston did not, as you thought 
advisable, attack Grant promptly, [He was then 
investing Vicksburg.] and I fear the result is that 
which you anticipated, if time be given. ... It is 
useless to look back, and it would be unkind to 
annoy you, in the midst of your many cares, with 
the reflections which I have not been able to avoid." 
Here we have a trait in Davis; he never throughout 
his life burdened his friends with his trials; no one 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 189 

had keener feelings, no one appreciated sympathy 
more, but complaint or indirect plea for sympathy 
never passed his lips; he shouldered his troubles 
and bore on in brave silence. That he was now 
encompassed day and night with care, a survey of 
the situation most cleai'ly discloses. Pemberton, 
besieged by Grant; Banks moving with a heavy 
force to lay a like siege around Port Hudson, thereby 
cutting the Confederacy in two; Bragg confronted 
by an army which, if successful, meant leaving all 
of Tennessee, Northern Alabama, and about all of 
Mississippi open to subjugation; and the people of 
those States, reahzing the danger, imploring help 
by telegraph and every mail. 

He laid the matter before Lee; could he hold 
Hooker with a part, and go with the rest of his 
army, assume command, defeat Rosecrans and thus 
compel Grant to give up his hold on Vicksburg? 
Lee with superb loyalty left that to Davis to decide; 
he would go, but did not hesitate to say that he 
feared that lack of whole-hearted support, that lack 
of fellow-enthusiasm which common experiences 
alone give and which weld the different corps of an 
army together. On the other hand, if he should 
seriously threaten Washington, would he not as 
effectively reheve the situation in the West, and in 
case he should gain another victory over the Army 
of the Potomac, as at Chancellorsville, would not 
England and France recognize the Confederacy? 



190 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

That Lee's heart was set on this move, there can be 
Uttle or no doubt. 

Davis called his Cabinet together and told them 
Lee's proposed campaign across the Potomac. 
Reagan, the Postmaster-General, whose home was 
in Texas and who fully realized the dangers of the 
Southwest, opposed it, urging that he should go 
with a part of his army to the help of Bragg. All 
the rest of the Cabinet was against him. More letters 
and despatches pouring in begging Davis to send 
reenforcements to Pemberton, he called his Cabinet 
together again. ''It was Saturday," says Reagan 
in his ''Memoirs." "We went early and remained 
in session until after dark in the evening." It was 
decided that Lee should cross the Potomac. Reagan 
went home cast down and records: "I could get no 
relief by talking to my wife; remained restless till 
probably midnight before going to bed and did not 
go to sleep that night. I got up before daylight and 
wrote a note to the President, telling him, in sub- 
stance that I felt so strongly that we had made a 
great mistake, and asking him to again convene the 
Cabinet and reconsider the question." Davis 
granted his request, but the decision was not reversed, 
and Lee set off for Gettysburg. The world knows 
what happened. He was not only defeated but, 
while his army was withdrawing on the fourth of 
July from what was in one sense the field of their 
glory, Pemberton was surrendering Vicksburg to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 191 

Grant, and Bragg was melting away before Rosecrans. 
And fate set her loom in motion to weave the shroud 
of the Confederacy. 

And how did Davis take these two mighty dis- 
asters? As his biographer, I would disdain to paint, 
if I could, the agony they gave him; if I gain him a 
single friend it must not be through pity. Let it 
suffice that his heart bled, but did not break; and 
if I may venture on further familiarity with the 
reader, it was that kind of courage, going hand in 
hand with tenderness and refinement, that cheers 
on this pen. Naturally enough these two terrific 
disasters were most depressing upon the public. 
Every enemy that Davis had, opened fire on him 
and his administration, using Johnston and Beaure- 
gard as their barricades. If any one wishes to see 
with what venom these attacks were made, let him 
turn to the Charleston Mercury, the Richmond 
Examiner and Pollard's ''Secret History of the 
Confederacy." Little did these editors dream of 
the use to which their contemptuous editorials 
would be put by vindictive Northern historians to 
gratify their execration of Davis and the South 
for the war. 

Even Lee was not wholly spared; suffering from 
their innuendoes, after Gettysburg, on August 8, 
he asked Davis to accept his resignation and appoint 
some one else to take his place, stating, what Albert 
Sydney Johnston had said when under like criticism, 



192 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

■■» 

that, for any general commanding an army, it was 

absolutely essential not only to have the confidence 

of his troops, but the confidence of the pubUc also, 

and that with the public the only test of fitness to 

command was success. Lee closed his letter as 

follows : 

''To your Excellency I am especially indebted for 
uniform kindness and consideration. You have 
done everything in your power to aid me in the 
work committed to my charge, without omitting 
anything to promote the general welfare. I pray 
that your efforts may at length be crowned with 
success, and that you may long hve to enjoy the 
thanks of a grateful people. 

With sentiments of great esteem, I am 
Very respectfully and truly yours, 

Robert Lee." 

To this letter Davis rephed: ''I admit the pro- 
priety of your conclusions, that an officer who loses 
the confidence of his troops should have his position 
changed, whatever his abihty; but when I read the 
sentence, I was not at all prepared for the application 
you were about to make. Expressions of discontent 
in the public journals furnish but little evidence of 
the sentiment of an army. I wish it were otherwise, 
even although all the abuse of myself should be 
accepted as the result of honest observation. 

Were you capable of stooping to it, you could 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 193 

easily surround yourself with those who would fill 
the Press with your laudations and seek to exalt 
you for what you have not done, rather than detract 
from the achievements which will make you and 
your Army the subject of history for generations to 
come. . . . 

But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to 
admit with all their implications, the points which 
you present, where am I to find that new commander 
who is to possess the greater ability which you 
beUeve to be required? I do not doubt the readiness 
with which you would give way to one who could 
accomplish all that you have wished, and you will 
do me the justice to believe that, if Providence 
should kindly offer such a person for our use, I 
should not hesitate to avail myself of his services. 

My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to dis- 
cover such hidden merit, if it exists. ... To ask 
me to substitute you by some one in my judgment 
more fit to command, or who would possess more 
of the confidence of the Army, or of reflecting men 
in the country, is to demand an impossibility. 

It only remains for me to hope that you will 
take all possible care of yourself, that your health 
and strength may be entirely restored, and that the 
Lord will preserve you for the important duties 
devolved upon you in the struggle of our suffering 
country for the independence j^ which we have 
engaged in war to maintain." 



194 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Was there ever a day in the Confederacy's life 
so momentous for it, or one in the Hfe of Lee and 
Davis so momentous for them? Where would the 
star of Lee ride today had Davis yielded to his 
request, prompted by the subdued yet widespread 
disaffection, and substituted Johnston or Beauregard, 
whose friends thought they were his equal? Would 
Lee be in the country's Hall of Fame? Would the 
star of Davis be clearing the clouds that have been 
hanging over him so long? We think not; and 
history would have lost a precious page, one of 
those pages in which poetry and glory live. 

It is only fair to Davis to repeat what Lee had 
said: "I am especially indebted for uniform kindness 
and consideration. You have done everything in 
your power to aid me in the work committed to 
my charge, without omitting anything to promote 
the general welfare." If any two men showed 
mutual respect and singleness of purpose and recog- 
nition of abihty, Davis and Lee, from the beginning 
to the end, maintained that relation to each other. 

In no two men of their day, or ever in any day, 
did the roots of convictions strike deeper, or with 
wills more indomitable to maintain them, than in 
Davis and Lee. Both, by barriers inborn, were 
isolated more or less from their fellow men; each 
met them, however, with the same urbanity; neither 
ever thought of gaining their good will or popularity 
by any affectations of cordiality. But there was 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 195 

this marked difference between them: Davis, how- 
ever apparently cold and austere he might be 
officially, when he mingled with old friends was as 
warm and free as a boy; while as for Lee, he had 
the respect, the admiration of every one in official 
and private life, but, so far as I can learn, no one ever 
lived who claimed to be on close or intimate terms 
with him. 

A single incident told me by Babcock of Grant's 
staff and friend of mine, may not be uninteresting. 
At Appomattox, while the terms of surrender were 
being copied, Seth Williams, the Adjutant-General 
of the Army of the Potomac and of whom it has 
been said, so dearly was he loved, ''had a harp in 
his breast," went up to Lee. He had been his 
adjutant at West Point when he was superintendent. 
Lee's face, for a moment, beamed with old-time 
friendship, but immediately resumed an air of not 
inviting familiarity or any revival of old relations, 
and Williams withdrew. In Lee's behalf it must be 
said it was a trying place and day for him. 

Lee was born for high levels, approaching, if not 
fulfilling, the ideals of his countrymen, North and 
South. That Davis commanded his loyalty and 
respect, up to the very last, is a fact which this pen 
throws into the balance against the charges of his 
enemies, let it count for what it may. Here is what 
Lee said, after the war, when asked by a lady his 
opinion of Davis: "If my opinion is worth anything 



196 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

you can always say that few people could have 
done better than Mr. Davis. I knew of none who 
could have done so well." And Lee had a chance to 
weigh the abilities of every prominent man in the 
public life of the South. 

That year, 1863, — a year of high combing waves 
of disasters — closed with the crushing defeat of 
Bragg at Chattanooga, and in the recesses of the 
heart of every reflecting Southerner the fate of the 
Confederacy was sealed. But as a rule he kept it 
to himself and manifested no willingness to abandon 
the cause and accept subjugation; ready to fight on, 
be the odds what they might and the result as 
[humiliating and disastrous as overwhelming defeat 
could make it. That spirit in Davis was the color- 
bearer and never quailed; the trumpet for him and 
for Lee and the self-respecting was the principle 
involved, a principle — we venture to prophesy — 
which will be the rallying ground for the people of the 
United States when the rights under the Constitu- 
tion are all in the constricting folds of the Lernsean 
Hydra of complete centralization. 

The bells that rang out the old and rang in the 
new were in one sense glad bells, for although they 
marked the end of a year of sore, heart-breaking 
troubles, our natures have a way of comforting us 
with the thought, ''Well, thank God, that year is 
at last over!" Oh, blessed, youthful, cheery-faced 
Hope, what a friend you are to us all! 



CHAPTER XX 

Of all the years in our country's life, hardly one 
compares in vital interest and historic significance 
with 1864. Throughout the South from stormy 
Cape Hatteras light to the wilds of Texas, through- 
out the North from Cape Ann with her twin Thacher 
Island Ughts to the Pacific, there was a vague con- 
sciousness in every home of coming portentous 
events; one or the other section must go down 
before the year ended. 

That vague consciousness was not confined to 
our country alone. England and France, the entire 
Old World, were on their feudal watch towers, so to 
speak, gazing across the Atlantic in cold, unsym- 
pathetic wonder as to which — North or South — 
would be victorious. And when we think of the 
grandsons of those who wore the gray and those 
who wore the blue moving side by side gallantly 
under the Stars and Stripes to save that Old World's 
civilization, there is a momentary rekindling in the 
fagots of the ashes of old fires as we recall the con- 
descending attitude toward us in 1864. England! 
it was our inheritance of your laws and the inspiring 
glory of your literature in our common language 
that drove us to your side on the fields of France. 

197 



198 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The outlook for the Confederacy was bad when 
1864 threw her New Year doors open; and must 
have driven sleep away from Davis till a late hour 
on many a night. The finances were in collapse; 
the blockade was growing more and more effectual; 
the supply of medicine for the sick and wounded in 
the field and for the prisoners in the camps almost 
exhausted; the North vigorously enforcing its procla- 
mations declaring medicines of all kinds contraband; 
the gathering of food and supplies for the army 
more and more difficult through the breaking down 
of the railroads; in certain quarters of Georgia and 
North Carolina unmistakable signs of revolt against 
orders and decrees for the conscription of men and 
supplies. And, above all, opposition to the adminis- 
tration, led on by several leading newspapers, growing 
daily more personal and malignant, distracting the 
public attention, enfeebling the heartbeat of resolu- 
tion and beclouding the future. 

To add to his trials, Bragg's crushing defeat was 
followed not only by charges against him of incom- 
petency, ill-temper and bad manners, but, what was 
worse for the morale of the Army, his corps and 
division commanders fell out among themselves 
and began accusing each other of misconduct and 
failure to obey orders. Each headquarters became 
the breeding place of angry, fault-finding communica- 
tions to the public and to the War Department. 
To one of Bragg's whining letters Davis rephed: 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 199 

"It must be a rare occurrence if a battle is fought 
without many errors and failures, but for which 
more important results would have been obtained; 
the experience of these diminishes the credit due, 
impairs the public confidence, undermines the morale 
of the Army, and works evil to the cause for which 
brave men have died and for which others have the 
same sacrifice to make." 

To one of Bragg's grumbling officers he wrote: 
"In this hour of our country's greatest need, when 
so much depends upon the harmonious cooperation 
of all the agents, I feel that I may confidently ask 
of those who have so often illustrated their patriotism 
by gallant deeds upon the field, that they will not 
allow personal antipathies to impair their usefulness 
to the public service." It is difficult to see how 
rebuke could have been made less offensive or appeal 
more impressive. 

Meanwhile, Johnston who had relieved Bragg, 
and Lee confronted by Meade on the Rapidan, 
were begging for food and clothing; thousands of 
the faithful, heroic men were without overcoats or 
shoes and the winter was unusually severe. Lee's 
letters to his family and the War Department, the 
diaries and the newspapers tell the wants and 
suffering of the southern armies. Moreover the 
North was gathering an immense army under 
Sherman to attack Johnston and one under Grant 
to attack Lee as soon as winter was over. From 



200 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

any point of view the situation called for patience, 
courage and fortitude. 

In February, upon the reenlistment of veteran 
regiments, Davis issued a feeling address to the 
Army in which he said: ''Would that it were possible 
to render my thanks to you in person, and in the 
name of our common country as well as my own, 
while pressing the hand of each war-worn veteran 
to recognize his title to our love, gratitude and 
admiration. With pride and affection my heart has 
accompanied you on every march, with soHcitude 
it has sought to minister to your every want, with 
exultation it has marked your every heroic achieve- 
ment." He closed saying: "Citizen defenders of the 
home, the liberties and the altars of the Confederacy! 
That the God whom we all humbly worship may 
shield you with His fatherly care and preserve you 
for safe return to the peaceful enjoyment of your 
friends and the associations of those you most love, 
is the earnest prayer of your Commander-in-Chief." 

It is said that what comes from the heart goes to 
the heart; and why?; because there are spirits whom 
God has given homes in the breast who clear the 
way. And is that address hushed and gone forever? 
Oh, no! it is speaking from every monument in the 
Southland. Defeat, as a rule, has been but another 
word for oblivion, but not so in the war between 
North and South; magnanimity and battlefield- born 
esteem have made it an honored guest of victory. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 201 

While Davis was straining every nerve to meet 
the impending dangers and under a galHng fire of 
criticism, on April 30, "Joseph Emory, the most 
beautiful and the brightest of our children," says 
Mrs. Davis in her ''Memoirs," "fell while playing 
on an upper gallery, down on a brick pavement and 
was almost instantly killed." A despatch came to 
Davis as he sat heartbroken by the dead child, and 
in trying to write an answer stopped and stared at 
his wife, asking in soft tones, "Did you tell me what 
was in it?" and laid down his pen saying "I must 
have this day with my little child." 

On the morning after the funeral in sweet Holly- 
wood, Sherman took up his march for Atlanta, 
Butler sailed up the James for Richmond, Siegal 
struck up the Shenandoah Valley, and Grant crossed 
the Rapidan. That was a bright, bird-singing May 
morning and I remember it well as the sunshine fell 
on the vraving colors. Lee with the valiant army of 
Northern Virginia struck Grant in the Wilderness. 

Let the fields of that battle summer — the Wil- 
derness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, 
Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Franklin and Nash- 
ville, tell their story. We believe there are no 
battlefields on this green earth that can tell a like 
one, have like memories, or a pride so exulting or 
affectionate in the forces that on them contested 
for victory. All spoke the same language, all had 
the same ideals, all the same faith in and attachment 



202 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to constitutional government "of and by the people.'' 
We are sure that on the anniversary nights of any 
one of these battlefields, the others send up a cheer 
as they catch the gleam of the magic camp fires in 
the bending sky. 

The first twenty days of May were days of intense 
pressure on Davis and full of strange fate for the 
Confederacy. For example, on the fifth the battle 
of the Wilderness began; on the sixth Longstreet, 
Lee's right-hand man, was wounded within a mile 
and a half of where Jackson in that same Wilderness 
fell and under almost identical circumstances, just 
as victory was within the grasp of Lee. 

When Butler came within striking distance of 
Richmond, Davis joined Beauregard in repulsing 
his advance and driving him back into his works 
at Bermuda Hundred. 

On the tenth Sheridan, who had left Spotsylvania 
to cut Lee's communications, defeated Stuart at 
Yellow Tavern, and was within gunshot of Rich- 
mond. Davis hurried home from his office, armed 
himself and rode to the front, urging by his presence 
the mixed commands defending the city to higher 
displays, if possible, of courage, and vwEo)' finally 
drove Sheridan away. Davis then went to the 
bedside of the gallant Stuart who had been mortally 
wounded, and taking his hand said, ''How do you 
feel, General." Stuart replied, ''Easy, but wiUing 
to die if God and my country think I have fulfilled 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 203 

my destiny and done my duty." Mrs. Davis says 
in her ''Memoirs" that that night her husband on 
bended knees entreated God that the precious life 
might be spared to our needy country, but that 
night he died. Stuart was only thirty-one years 
old, and of a joyous nature. He lies with Davis in 
Hollywood Cemetery. 

Richmond, through the superb gallantry of Lee's 
army, was safe for that summer; but not so Atlanta. 
Sherman with his superior numbers was outflanking 
and forcing Johnston to fall back from one position 
to another. If Lee, Grant, Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, 
or Hampton had been in Johnston's place we think 
Sherman would have had to fight for his life long 
before he reached the Etowah and Chattahoochee. 
The public of all that territoiy, the granary of 
supplies of food for Lee as well as Johnston, began 
to besiege Davis with urgent, almost indignant, 
inquiries as to whether Johnston was to fall back 
forever without giving battle, finally posting a 
delegate to Richmond to lay before him their 
anxieties and manifest dangers. Thereupon Davis 
sent Bragg to interview Johnston as to his plans, 
he was then within sound of the church bells of 
Atlanta. Johnston giving Bragg no assurance of 
taking the offensive or defending the city to the 
last, Davis relieved him and put Hood in command, 
who at once, gave battle, met with defeat, and 
Atlanta was given up to Sherman. 



204 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Da\'is then visited Hood and addressed his Army, 
reviving its cast-down resolution, and Hood struck 
off with it to cut Sherman's communications, and, 
by one of the merest chances of war, lost gaining a 
a victory over the forces left by Sherman who had 
headed for Savannah. 

In August, Farragut, lashed to his mast, forced 
his entrance by Forts Morgan and Gaines into 
Mobile Bay and captured the Confederate iron-clad 
Tennessee. In September, Sheridan swept Early 
from the Shenandoah Valley; in December, Hood 
was utterly defeated at Nashville and on Christmas 
Day, Savannah fell ringing the knell of the Con- 
federacy. Thus ended that battle summer. But, 
unfortunately, while it was going on and the armies 
were making a record of stirring valor, another 
record was being made, not of glory but of shame 
and sorrow, impeaching the humanity of South and 
North. Namely, the ghastly suffering and frightful 
death roll in the prison camps of both sections, 
mainly through the suspension of exchange, which 
calls for a chapter of its own. 



CHAPTER XXI 

In 1876 when the pre-war fraternal relations 
between North and South were beginning to revive, 
a resolution extending universal amnesty was offered 
in Congress. James G. Blaine, a brilliant, magnetic 
man and a prospective presidential candidate of 
the Republican Party, declared, in the discussion 
of the resolution, that Davis was the author ''know- 
ingly, deliberately and wilfully of the gigantic 
murder and crime of Andersonville, " where in that 
summer and autumn of 1864 the mortality of 
Federal prisoners was shocking in the extreme. 
This charge iterated and reiterated for years by 
politicians, playing as he for the old soldier vote, 
found its way into the histories of the war, leaving 
on the mind of every schoolboy who read them 
a lasting impression that Davis was guilty of the 
alleged crime. In behalf of justice, fair dealing, 
and the integrity of history, let us give the facts. 

The first Confederate prisoners taken in the 
war. May, 1861, were the officers and crew of the 
Savannah, a Charleston pilot boat fitted out as a 
privateer and sailing under letters of marque and 
reprisal. They were immediately imprisoned, some 
put in irons, and subsequently all brought before 
the courts, charged with piracy and treason. 

205 



206 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

As soon as this was known, Mr. Davis by one 
of his aides sent a letter to Mr. Lincoln saying, 
after rehearsing the treatment of the officers and 
crew as given in the newspapers: "It is the desire 
of this Government so to conduct the war now 
existing as to mitigate its horrors as far as may be 
possible, and, with this intent its treatment of the 
prisoners captm-ed by its forces [referring to 
those taken in the battle of Big Bethel] has been 
marked by the greatest humanity and leniency 
consonant with pubhc obligation. Some have been 
permitted to return home, others to remain at 
large, and all have been furnished with rations for 
their subsistence such as we allowed to our own 
troops." 

He then went on to say: "A just regard to 
humanity and to the honor of this Government 
requires me to state explicitly that, painful as will 
be the necessity, this Government will deal out 
to the prisoners held by it the same treatment and 
the same fate as shall be experienced by those 
captured on the Savannah; and if driven to the 
terrible necessity of retaliation, that retaliation 
will be extended so far as shall be requisite to secure 
the abandonment of a practice unknown to the 
warfare of civilized man and so barbarous as to 
disgrace the nation which shall be guilty of inaugurat- 
ing it. With this view and because it may not have 
reached you, I renew the proposition made to the 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 207 

Commander of the blockade squadron, to exchange 
for the prisoners ... an equal number, now 
held by us, according to rank." 

The bearer of this letter was not allowed an 
interview with Mr. Lincoln, and no answer ever 
was made. 

That his repugnance for retaliation was deep 
and inborn, is beyond question. Here to that 
effect is one of a sheaf of testimony that might be 
given; it is in a letter to the London Times by 
Benjamin. 

'Tor the four years during which I was one of his 
most trusted advisers, the recipient of his confidence 
and the sharer, to the best of my abilities, in his 
labors and responsibilities, I learnt to know him 
perhaps better than any other living man. Neither 
in private conversation nor in Cabinet council 
have I ever heard him utter an unworthy thought 
or ungenerous sentiment. . . It was urged [in a 
special case from Missouri, the McNeil case] not 
only by friends, but by members of his Cabinet in 
Council also, that it was his duty to repress such 
an outrage by retaliation; he was immovable in 
resistance of such counsels, insisting it was repug- 
nant to any sense of justice and humanity that the 
innocent should be made the victims for the crimes 
of such monsters." 

Again in the same letter Benjamin said, in referring 
to the prisoners in the Dahlgren raid, upon whom 



208 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the people called for execution, papers having been 
found on his body after the repulse and capture of 
many of his party, authorizing the burning of 
Richmond and the killing of Davis and members of 
his Cabinet, ''A discussion [in the Cabinet] which 
became so heated as almost to create unfriendly 
feeling, by reason of the unshaken firmness of Mr. 
Davis in maintaining that, although those men 
merited a refusal to grant them quarter in the heat 
of battle, yet they had been received to mercy by 
their captors as prisoners of war, and, as such, were 
sacred; and that we should be dishonored if harm 
should overtake them after their surrender. To 
Jefferson Davis and to his constancy of purpose 
did those men owe their safety, in spite of hostile 
public opinion and in opposition to two-thirds of 
his Cabinet." 

Davis of North Carolina, who succeeded Benjamin 
as Attorney-General, said on one occasion after the 
war: ''I do not think I am a very cruel man but I 
declare to you that it was the most difficult thing 
in the world to keep Mr. Davis up to the measure of 
justice. He wanted to pardon everybody. If ever a 
wife, a mother or a sister got into his presence, it 
took but a little while for their tears to wash out 
the record." 

As will be remembered the battle of Bull Run 
was fought July 21, and many of our men fell into 
the hands of the South. In the autumn relatives 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 209 

and friends began to implore for their release, and 
both Houses of Congress requested Mr. Lincoln to 
take steps immediately to that end. To avoid 
official recognition of the belligerent Confederacy as 
a nation, he appointed two Commissioners empow- 
ered not expressly to make an exchange but to 
visit the prisoners and provide for their wants and 
comfort. 

Of course these Commissioners were not allowed 
to cross the Confederate lines, for reasons that will 
occur to any thoughtful reader; but the Southern 
officials they met under flags of truce manifested 
such a frank readiness for entering upon some sort 
of a general arrangement of exchange that they 
agreed to a temporary cartel, which was subse- 
quently approved at Washington. Some months 
later, in February, 1862, a formal cartel was entered 
into by Howell Cobb on the part of the South and 
General Wool of the North, providing for the 
exchange, man for man, within a short time after 
capture, and any surplus on either side to be released 
on parole. 

This cartel for a while, or as long as the South 
had a surplus of prisoners, was carried out in fairly 
good faith by both sides, although its operation and 
continuance were seriously interfered with by Butler 
hanging Mumford, a citizen of New Orleans, on 
Saturday June 7, 1862, at thirteen minutes before 
eleven a.m., in the presence of a vast crowd, for 



210 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

hauling down and trampling on the flag; by Davis 
proclaiming Butler a felon and authorizing his 
execution if captured in retaliation for Mumford; 
and by Pope's orders which have already been 
mentioned. The status of the recaptured slaves also 
complicated the carrying out of its terms. 

At length because of the death and suffering of so 
many of our prisoners at Belle Isle and because the 
exchange was blocked by contentions of one kind 
or another, Davis, July 2, 1863 — the battle of 
Gettysburg was going on — asked Stephens, his 
Vice-President, to go to Washington under flag of 
truce and lay before Mr. Lincoln, if he could see 
him, all the difficulties in the situation; to arrange 
and settle all differences and disputes which had 
arisen in the execution of the cartel; to agree to any 
modification of its terms as might be found neces- 
sary; and, finally, "to enter into such arrangements 
or understanding about the mode of carrying on 
hostilities as should confine the severities of the war 
within such limits as were rightfully imposed not 
only by modern civilization, but also by our common 
Christianity." 

Mr. Stephens was not allowed to pass the line?, 
and when the object of his mission was telegraphed 
to Washington, the War Department, fully appreci- 
ating by this time the significance of Lee's repulse 
at Gettysburg, curtly replied: ''The customary 
agents and channels are adequate for all needful 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 211 

communication and conferences between the United 
States and the insurgents." Had Pickett broken 
through and the old Army of the Potomac been 
defeated, would Stephens have been allowed to cross 
our hues? Oh, yes; would such a contemptuous 
answer have been sent? Oh, no, and the gates of 
every prison camp, South and North, would have 
swung wide open. 

With the repulse of Lee and the surrender of 
Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the tide turned as to 
surplus of prisoners, the cartel broke wide apart; 
all exchanges were suspended, and the cry from 
prison camps was pitiful. 

The Commissioners, Federal and Confederate, at 
once began charging each other with the responsi- 
bility for wrecking that humane agreement. After 
weighing the evidence we are constrained to deny 
entire innocence to either. Technically, in reference 
to the slaves recaptured, the North had decidedly 
the best defence; but, on the other hand, the South 
was far more frank, generous and consistent. 

Notwithstanding the cartel's official suspension, 
special exchanges dribbled along till Grant took 
command of the Army in the spring of 1864. Before 
moving on Lee he visited Butler, then at the head of 
the Department of Eastern Virginia and North 
Carolina, who, with his usual assumption of power, 
had entered into arrangements with Judge Ould, 
the Confederate Commissioner of Prisoners, for 



212 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

renewal of exchange. Grant, on learning what had 
been done, forbade any further exchanges. In 
August, while before Petersburg, he wrote to Butler, 
who had again, without any authority so to do, 
surreptitiously reopened negotiations with the Con- 
federate Commissioner: ''It is hard on our men 
held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, 
but it is humanity to those left in the ranks 
to fight our battles. Every man released, on 
parole or otherwise, becomes an active soldier 
against us, either directly or indirectly. If we com- 
mence a system! of exchange which liberates all 
prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the 
whole South is exterminated. If we hold those 
caught, they amount to no more than as many dead 
men. At this time to release all rebel prisoners 
North would insure Sherman's defeat and would 
compromise our safety here." 

This letter is the highest testimonial that was ever 
paid to the gallantry of Lee's army. Grant's losses 
from the day we crossed the Rapidan, the fourth of 
May, till the date of this letter in August, had 
almost, if not quite, equalled Lee's entire strength 
at the outset of the campaign; and it was the mem- 
ory of these losses that beat down, for the moment, 
the charitable impulses of Grant's nature. When 
the immediate dangers were over, it will be seen 
that he was true to himself and extended every 
facility for the welfare of the prisoners of both sides. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 213 

At this point it is only due to Butler to say that 
no man, North or South, did more, not one even 
approached him in persistent endeavor to effect 
exchange and thereby save thousands of lives; and 
we have no doubt that in the meditative hours of old 
age these efforts, clothed in beauty, came back to 
comfort him. 

When Grant's letter to Butler prohibiting further 
exchange became known in the prison camps. South 
and North, hope fled; cold-eyed despair took her 
chair beside the hospital cots; shallow graves soon 
welcomed the pale, homesick, emaciated youths, 
and from then on almost every hour of day and 
night, from Andersonville and Sahsbury, from Rock 
Island and Elmira, their spirits were flying upward, 
duly exchanged; yes, duly exchanged to join the 
army of the blessed. 

All the autumn and early winter of 1864 the death 
rate at Andersonville was especially shocking; and 
at every other Southern camp as well as at every 
Northern camp it was heavy. The South maintained 
that it did the best it could; that its supplies of 
medicine were exhausted and its supply of food 
reduced to barely enough to keep soul and body 
together in its army; which I know to be true from 
the haversacks of the dead on the fields of Spotsyl- 
vania and Petersburg. 

It is a matter of fact. Confederate authorities 
throughout that autumn when the captives were 



214 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

falling like the leaves of a white ash the morning 
after a frost, plead and plead for exchange, ofTering 
at last to let every one go home without equivalent. 
The South can without fear or hesitation appeal to 
the official War Records as to the desire and will of 
the Confederate War Department to mitigate the 
horrible conditions. 

Authors of repute have seen fit to incorporate in 
their histories of the war, moving accounts of the 
suffering in the Southern camps and the ghastly 
spectacle of their victims; accompanied, furthermore, 
by extracts from letters, written by prominent per- 
sons to Davis, protesting conditions in some of the 
camps as a shame and dishonor; thereby, with 
infernal malice, thrusting him into the picture with 
all its speaking condemnation. But they have not 
described the like suffering or the ghastly spectacle 
of the hollow-eyed prisoners in Northern camps, on 
delivery; nor have they given extracts from letters 
written by clergymen and men of prominence to 
Mr. Lincoln, censuring him for refusal to exchange, 
all of which can be found in the same volume of 
official War Records. Much of the reports by Com- 
mittees of Congress, Federal and Confederate, as to 
the condition of camps and the appearance of 
returned prisoners, was mere war propaganda; and, 
as such, is unreliable, carrying with it, as that of 
all wars, the seeds of its own early decay. 

If, as has been said before, Mr. Davis is to be held 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 215 

responsible for the dead Northern prisoners merely 
because he was Conunander-in-Chief of the Con- 
federate armies, may not Mr. Lincoln by similar 
reasoning be held responsible for the Southern dead 
in Northern prison camps? 

A word, now, as to the records of deaths and the 
number of prisoners. They were first brought to 
light by Hill of Georgia replying to Blaine's charge. 
He gave the figures of the deaths as reported by 
Stanton in response to a request of Congress: ''Con- 
federate dead in Northern prisons 26,436. Union 
dead in Southern prisons 22,576." As to the number 
of prisoners. Hill referred to a report of Surgeon- 
General Barnes, claiming that it, as well as Stanton's 
report, was available for the inspection of any 
member of the House. Barnes gave: "Total pris- 
oners held in North 220,000; held by the South 
270,000." Blaine and Garfield in their reply on the 
following day did not deny the existence of this 
report; Garfield said that he had had a note from 
Surgeon-General Barnes relative to the figures in it, 
which seems to confirm its existence at that time. 

Twenty-seven years after, when the celebrated 
historian Rhodes asked the then surgeon-general for 
a copy of the Barnes Report, he was told there was 
no such document in the War Department; and to 
my request for a copy, I was so informed. What 
became of it? It is possible that Barnes, finding his 
figures unreliable, withdrew his report; but that he 



216 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

did make such a report is beyond the shadow of 
doubt. My only excuse for bringing in its contested 
figures is to defend Mr. Davis from a charge that 
in the main was untrue and did him much wrong. 
Finally let me avow there has been no point in 
this narrative that I have dwelt upon with so little 
pleasure. For in all reason, propriety and self-respect 
I submit that the day for the discussion of the 
treatment of prisoners, South and North, has long 
gone by. In the winged language of the gifted Sir 
Thomas Browne, ''Let us write our wrongs in ashes; 
draw the curtain of night on our injuries; shut them 
up in the tower of oblivion and let them be as though 
they had not been." So then, let us leave this 
disgrace where it lies — off, off to one side in the 
graveyard of our country's history. She laments the 
record, it was not creditable to either section. 



CHAPTER XXII 

In the South, from the earliest Colonial times, 
New Year's, for high and low, young and old, white 
and black, had been the culmination of a week of 
hospitaUty, family visiting, feasting and happiness; 
outdoor sports during the day, dancing at night in 
cabin and manor-house, which were decked with 
mistletoe, ferns and holly. 

But not so the week ending January 1, 1865. There 
was not a home in which was rejoicing. Crutches 
and empty chairs had taken the place of mistletoe 
and holly. Many had lost one or more soldier sons, 
and instead of joy and plenty, sorrow and want 
looked in at the window when the evening lamp or 
candle was lit. Bare chimneys, torn gardens and 
fire-scorched dooryard trees were all that was left 
of hundreds of field and flock-overlooking mansions. 
Where Festivity was wont to hold her holiday of 
joy. War's Furies were having one of their orgies on 
the track of desolation that Sherman had left in his 
relentless march. The fate of the Confederacy, 
— when would the war end — was the one all-absorb- 
ing topic before the fireside of every home; nothing 
else was talked about; grave care never left the 
doorway nor the pillow. 

217 



218 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

But that was not all, nor the worst of it, by any 
means. The mighty soldier, public opinion, had lost 
heart, and the humble, who had risked all they had 
— their lives — for the Confederacy were cast down 
and low in mind, wondering if God had turned His 
face away from their cause. 

It was a dark, sore time for the South; and what 
filled her cup with wormwood and gall was the fact 
that the Governors of several States, under the 
cloak of law, were stabbing the body politic; many 
ambitious, jealous and disappointed politicians and 
impatient fiery editors had turned fault-finders and 
were sowing broadcast the seed of discord and 
gloom. 

The spirit of the Confederacy, that up to that 
time had been their welcome and honored guest, 
now in sorrow quitted their querulous firesides for 
the hearths of her more steadfast friends and for the 
campfires of her gallant lovers with the colors. 
But since only here and there a ragged fragment 
was left of her armies that had so valiantly contested 
the battlefields of Shiloh, Perryville, Stone River, 
Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, FrankUn 
and Nashville, there was no place for her to find a 
soldier home save in Richmond, Johnston's and Lee's 
armies. 

On the first day of January then, 1865, there was 
widespread, peevish disaffection; and confidence in 
ultimate success had given way to despair in many 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 219 

a household. Sherman was on his devastating, 
triumphant march with more than twice as many- 
men as his adversary. Grant was only waiting for 
spring to attack Lee. Wilmington, the last port, 
was about to be closed. Available supplies of food 
and clothing were almost exhausted. The situation, 
to lookers-on, seemed, and almost was, hopeless; 
only a matter of weeks and months now till the 
South would have to lay down its arms. In other 
words, at the beck of its conquerors it would have to 
come under the yoke, a contingency, which for four 
years it had fought against and dreaded, subjugation 
to a section that it had reason to fear was revengeful. 

To this day there are people in the world (and 
some are in the South) who wonder, in view of the 
inevitable downfall of the Confederacy, that Davis 
did not own up to defeat and ask for terms. Terms! 
terms! if suffrage to the emancipated slaves should 
be insisted upon; if high officials in or out of the 
army should not be eligible for Congress, who would 
or could carry them out? Of all the phases in the 
life of the Confederacy, not one opens upon such a 
field of speculation. But mark my word, whoever 
enters it will soon find himself in a labyrinth of 
delusive, contingent possibilities, not a path he can 
take that will lead him to certainty, all ending in 
miry, tangled political swamps, so to speak, or to 
the brink of anarchy. 

It may be that a wiser mind than mine can enter 



220 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

this labyrinth and find a way out that would justify 
asking for terms, but I cannot find such an one and 
am convinced that it was better, far better for the 
South as well as the North, and above all for our 
country at large, that Davis did not ask for terms 
and stood by the ship until she went down. 

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to give an 
account of the Hampton Roads Conference where, 
on February 3, 1865, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward 
met commissioners appointed by Davis to confer 
upon bringing the war to an end. The Conference 
was the outcome of a visit by Mr. F. P. Blair, Senior, 
of Washington, D. C, to Davis in Richmond. Blair 
was a boyhood friend of Davis at Transylvania, the 
editor of the Globe in Washington when Davis was 
Secretary of War and Senator, a sagacious politician, 
had pulled the stroke oar in every contest between 
Whig and Democrat for thirty years, and was then 
on intimate and confidential terms with Mr. Lincoln, 

His pass through Grant's lines was as follov/s, 
written on a card: ''Allow the bearer, F. P. Blair, 
Senior, to pass our lines, go South and return. 
A. Lincoln." Manifestly he and Mr. Lincoln had 
talked the matter over more than once, 

From his manuscript giving an account of his 
interview, it appears that the scheme he had worked 
out in the longing hours of his old age for reuniting 
the sections was to assert the Monroe Doctrine and 
have the armies of North and South march to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 221 

Mexico and drive out Maximilian, whom Napoleon 
III had placed on the throne with a view of making 
Mexico a colonial dependency of France. The 
armies' common experiences in the campaign into 
Mexico and the tm'ning of public attention away 
from immediate home questions, Mr. Blair believed, 
would give a chance for the renewal of old ties. 

After fully unfolding his scheme in his interview 
with Davis, he observed: ''There is my problem, Mr 
Davis; do you think it possible to be solved?" Davis 
after consideration replied: "I think so." Touching 
the project of bringing the sections together, Davis 
thought the great difficulty was the excessive vin- 
dictiveness produced by outrages perpetrated in the 
invaded States during the war. "In relation to the 
vindictiveness produced by the war," says Blair, "I 
thought he was mistaken in supposing it would be 
attended with great difficulty in producing reconcile- 
ment between the States and the people." 

Blair goes on in his manuscript to tell what had 
happened in passing through the lines as a proof of 
early reconcilement, that the soldiers had manifested 
no unfriendly feelings; that Captain Deacon of 
Boston, who carried him through the lines to deliver 
him over to Captain Davis of South Carolina, drew 
his bottle from his bag and proposed to drink his 
health; that they drank with mutual good will and 
gave each other their hands. "This spirit of magna- 
nimity exists in the soldiers of both sides. It is only 



222 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the politicians and those who profit or hope to profit 
by the disasters of war who indulge in acrimony. 
Mr. Davis said that what I remarked was very 
just in the main." 

In reply to Blair's holding out the fame Davis 
would acquire by bringing peace, he replied: ''What 
his name might be in history he cared not, if he 
could restore the prosperity and happiness of his 
country; that was the end and aim of his being. 
He said I ought to know with what reluctance he had 
been drawn out of the Union; that he had followed 
the old flag longer and with more devotion than any- 
thing on earth; that when the flag unfurled itself in 
the breeze [at Bull Run] he saw it with a sigh." 

A memorandum was made of the interview and 
when written out was submitted to Mr. Blair, 
"and," says Mr. Davis in the ''Rise and Fall of 
the Confederacy", "altered in so far as he desired in 
any respect, to change the expressions employed." 
Mr. Blair was given a copy and authorized to show 
it to Mr. Lincoln. 

The last sentence of this memorandum was as 
follows: "Our conference ended with no other result 
than an agreement that he would learn whether Mr. 
Lincoln would adopt his [Mr. Blair's] project and 
send or receive Commissioners to negotiate for a 
peaceful solution of the questions at issue; that he 
would report to him my readiness to enter upon 
negotiations; and that I knew of no insurmountable 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 223 

obstacles to such a treaty of peace as would secure 
greater advantages to both parties than any result 
which arms could achieve." 

Davis gave a letter to Mr. Blair saying: "I have 
no disposition to find obstacles in forms and am 
willing, now as heretofore, to enter into negotiations 
for the restoration of peace, to send or receive Com- 
missioners . . . and renew the effort to enter into 
conference with a view to secure peace to the two 
countries." 

Mr. Blair, upon submitting this letter to Mr. 
Lincoln, received from him a reply as follows: ''Sir: 
You having shown me Mr. Davis' letter to you of 
the twelfth instant, you may say to him that I have 
constantly been, am now, and shall continue ready 
to receive any agent whom he or any other influential 
person now resisting the National authority may 
informally send to me with a view of securing peace 
to the people of our common country. Yours, etc., 
A. Lincoln." 

Blair returned to Richmond and gave Davis this 
letter, and in the course of their talk Blair suggested 
that Lee and Grant might enter into an arrangement 
by which hostilities would be suspended and the 
way paved for ending the war. Davis told him that 
he 'Svould willingly intrust to General Lee such 
negotiations as were indicated," and, subsequently 
Lee, at his suggestion, wrote to Grant for an inter- 
view with that end in view; Grant replied wisely 



224 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

that he had no power to bind the North, that the 
matter was wholly in the hands of civil authorities. 
Mr. Blair, during his two visits to Richmond, 
had met and talked freely with many of his old 
friends and political associates now members of the 
Confederate Congress or connected with Depart- 
ments; and here let me observe that there was no 
man so open-hearted in the world as the old-time 
Southerner once he was sure of the sincerity of his 
companion. So then, they withheld nothing of their 
hopes or fears from their aged friend, and doubtless 
freely confessed that the tide was strong against 
them; in fact, it only had to rise a little higher and 
they were done for. But the great question they put 
to Mr. Blair was, What terms will the North give? 
Blair assured them that Lincoln was inchned to treat 
them generously, every drop of his blood was 
Southern, conservative and not radical, beside he 
was naturally kind-hearted. The result was that such 
a fervent sentiment for opening negotiations with 
Lincoln for peace set in, that Davis had to take the 
matter up, although from the very outset he had little 
faith in success, for the reason that, when it actually 
came to concrete terms, it would not be Mr. Lin- 
coln the South would have to deal with, but Stanton 
and the forceful, radical members of Congress. 
However, he appointed Vice-President Stephens of 
Georgia, to whom Lincoln had virtually offered a 
position in his Cabinet, Hunter of Virginia, an 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 225 

ex-United States Senator, and John A. Campbell, 
Assistant Secretary of War, and ex-member of the 
Supreme Com-t of the United States, a Commission 
to go to Washington with the following certificate of 
appointment: "In conformity with the letter of 
Mr. Lincoln of which the foregoing is a copy, you 
are requested to proceed to Washington City for an 
informal conference with him upon the issues 
involved in the existing war, and for the purpose of 
securing peace t^Jhe two countries." 

Benjamin, Davis' Secretary of State, had drawn 
up a much more diplomatic form of appointment: 
''You are requested to proceed to Washington City 
for conference with him [Mr. Lincoln] upon the 
subject to which it relates." Davis made a serious 
mistake in modifying Benjamin's draft — more than 
one of my unconverted friends has characterized it 
as "a h — 11 of a mistake," and for the sake of 
good fellowship I never found fault with their 
amendment. However, after the war was over, 
Benjamin, in reply to a letter from Davis as to the 
reasons given by him to the Cabinet when the draft 
was submitted, says that he [Davis] contended if 
the words ''two countries" were left out, it would 
be a virtual concession from the head of the Con- 
federacy that it had abandoned its claim for 
existence, had been a mere factional rebelUon and 
would be so argued if the case ever came before the 
Courts. Benjamin approved the change of language. 



226 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Nevertheless we think it was a mistake, for under 
whatever certificate of appointment his Commis- 
sioners might meet Mr. Lincoln or Commissioners he 
might appoint, the terms would not have been other 
than they were, and Davis would have had the same 
reasons for refusing to accept them and thereby 
would have escaped the charge of obstinacy. It 
goes without saying, that Davis never was made for 
a diplomat; and so far as the nature of the issue 
involved, it was mighty lucky for the Confederacy 
and the country he was not; for a diplomat, as soon 
as Vicksburg fell, would have patched up some sort 
of a peace that would have lasted but a little while, 
and war broken out again more bitterly than before 
between the sections. 

On the third day of February, 1865, Mr. Lincoln 
and Mr. Seward had a conference with the Con- 
federate Commission on board a vessel in Hampton 
Roads off Fort Monroe. The upshot of it all was 
that the Southern forces should lay down their arms 
and go home, accept the abolition of slavery as an 
irrevocable fact, with an assurance of freedom from 
penalties of all kinds so far as Lincoln could secure 
them, and their States admitted to representation 
as of old in Congress. 

The Confederate Commission urged more explicit 
terms, but Mr. Lincoln could not and wisely did not 
pledge himself to anything more explicit and parted 
with them as friends and not enemies. They went 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 227 

home disconsolate and had to report that no extended 
armistice would be allowed, no treaty or agreement 
leading to ultimate settlement betv/een the Con- 
federate or individual States would be considered, 
because that would be a recognition of their existence 
as a separate country, that there was nothing left 
for them but unconditional submission. In view of 
all that had happened in the four years of war, we 
think they had no right to expect anything else. 

On February 6, Davis wrote to Senator Hill of 
Georgia: ''The Commissioners have returned. They 
met Lincoln and Seward at Fortress Monroe, were 
informed that neither the Confederate States nor an 
individual State could be recognized as having power 
to enter any agreement presenting the conditions of 
peace. Nothing less would be accepted than uncon- 
ditional submission to the Government and laws of 
the United States, and that Congress had adopted a 
Constitutional Amendment for the emancipation of 
all the slaves, which disposed of that question." 

On the same day, in obedience to an Act of Con- 
gress, Lee was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all 
the armies and in acknowledging his appointment to 
the Adjutant-General said: ''I am indebted alone to 
the kindness of his Excellency, the President, for my 
nomination to the high and arduous office and wish 
I had the ability to fill it to advantage." As a matter 
of fact his appointment was made by the newspapers 
and a cabal in the Confederate Congress inimical to 



228 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis that had secured the passage of the Act. On 
the fourteenth, Lee issued a general order to the 
Army, saying: "The choice between war and abject 
submission is before them. To such a proposal, 
brave men with arms in their hands can have but 
one answer. They cannot barter manhood for peace, 
nor the right of self-government for life or property." 
Meanwhile mass meetings, stirred to the deepest 
enthusiasm by Davis and others, had been held in 
Richmond, protesting unwillingness to accept sub- 
jugation and determination to fight it out to the last. 
That Davis rose to a great height in eloquence on 
these occasions was conceded by his bitterest 
enemies. But never was defiant eloquence more 
fatefully thrown away or so futile; the eyes of the 
dying Confederacy were glazing, and all that it 
accomplished was to focus on him the responsibility 
of the entire South for the war, and to increase in the 
North a will to punish and reluctance to forgive. 

But suppose he had made an apology or expressed 
hopes for charity, what a figure this would have been 
and how scorned by every battlefield where the 
banners of the Confederacy had been carried! 
Nature loves her peaceful, ranging hills with their 
rich valleys of waving grain and grazing flocks, but 
she calls on the sturdy granite to face an angry sea. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

In desperation over the Peace Conference, and the 
black oncoming cloud of defeat turning gray show- 
ing it had a tempest in its breast, a measure to free 
all slaves who would enlist was passed by the Con- 
gress with the approval of Davis and Lee. But it 
was altogether too late, as well as the offer Davis 
made to England to free every slave if she would 
acknowledge the independence of the Confederacy. 
The negroes, with good sense, paid no attention to 
the offer of Congress, for they knew right well that 
freedom was coming to them, without shedding a 
drop of their own blood or that of any one. Their 
course was no disappointment to Davis and he never 
found fault with them, nor is there any evidence 
that he grew petulant or despondent over the failure 
of the whites who, for one reason or another, turned 
a deaf ear to Lee's appeal to come back into the 
ranks again where they were needed so much. Let 
this be said for Davis, that while he was sensitive, 
over-sensitive, to any disrespect or reflection on his 
honor, he never gave way to ill-natured disappoint- 
ment over the conduct of any one, but he would 
wonder over the lack of spirit in the face of trial. 
As for himself, dark as the hour was, he met the 

229 



230 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

world, in his home or on the street, with the same 
unfailing natural courtesy. His face was paler and 
care sat on his brow, but the Peace Conference had 
not benumbed but had, in fact, stimulated his will. 

In the early morning of March 25, after long 
consultation with Davis over the situation, Lee made 
a well studied assault on Grant's line near the 
Appomattox with a view to compel him to pull back 
his left, which threatened Lee's only way of safe 
withdrawal toward Johnston, who was confronting 
Sherman in North Carolina. Gordon, who made the 
attack, was not supported as was planned and met 
with defeat. He was a strikingly handsome man 
with very black hair, fair temples and something 
superb in his bearing. Like Lee, McPherson and 
Hancock he seemed to carry glory with him to the 
battlefield. 

Instead of pulling back his lines. Grant, the most 
modest and sweetly attractive man that ever wore a 
uniform, fathoming Lee's design, pushed forward and 
captured Five Forks. That victory was won on a 
lowery Saturday afternoon, April 1, and on Sunday 
forenoon the sun was shining and the people of Rich- 
mond were on their way to church. Lee sent a 
despatch to Davis that he would withdraw that night 
all troops in the lines of Petersburg and Richmond. 

Davis was in St. Paul's — it was communion 
Sunday — when a messenger brought in the despatch. 
He at once withdrew and, that night toward mid- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 231 

night, boarded a train for Danville. The last com- 
mand from Lee's army from the lines around Rich- 
mond passed through its streets and crossed the 
James just before daybreak on its way to Appomat- 
tox, and when the sun rose the capital of the Old 
Dominion was on fire and her people in tears. 

The train Davis was on with his Cabinet and Con- 
gressmen and others whose homes were not in 
Virginia was long and heavy. The engine, like the 
Confederacy, had seen its best day and its speed was 
slow; the news that he was aboard outran it, and 
wondering crowds gathered at every station, crying 
to see him. He addressed them in confident terms, 
saying that, although the capital had fallen, Lee's 
indomitable old army was still in the field and, if 
they would still keep up their courage, and those 
who were able would rally to the colors and meet 
the enemy with the bravery of old, all would be 
well at last. 

On the fifth of April, from Danville, he issued a 
proclamation in which he said: ''It would be unwise 
to conceal the moral and material injury to our 
cause resulting from the occupation of our capital 
by the enemy. It is equally unwise and unworthy 
of us to allow our own energies to falter and our 
efforts to become relaxed under reverses however 
calamitous they may be. . . . It is for us, my 
countrymen, to show, by our bearing under reverses, 
how wretched has been the self-deception of those 



232 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

who have believed us less able to endure misfortune 
with fortitude than to encounter danger with cour- 
age. . . . Animated by that confidence in your 
spirit of fortitude which never failed me yet, I 
announce to you, my fellow-countrymen, that it is 
my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole 
heart and soul, that I never will consent to abandon 
to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the 
States of the Confederacy. Let us, then, not despair 
but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance 
and with unconquered, unconquerable hearts." 

The Dan that flows by Danville and is born in the 
Alleghenies is a pleasant river to see, with its big 
willows and adjacent farms. Along its banks spring 
was weaving her bridal veil; new-shorn sheep were 
grazing in stump-dotted pastures; the crescent- 
breasted lark, the catbird and the mocking bird 
were singing light-heartedly, but Davis' heart was 
not light as he looked over the fields along the Dan. 
Those were long and anxious days for him. His first 
thought in the morning and the last at night was, 
How is it going with Lee and his gallant old army of 
Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania? 

Not hearing a word, he could stand it no longer and 
sent young Wise, the author of that fascinating book, 
"The End of an Era," to Lee for tidings. Wise 
found Lee at Farmville pushing on with his heroic 
army, its banners, that had waved triumphant 
on many battlefields, still flying, but its corps 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 233 

reduced to mere remnants, tired, hungry and hope- 
less, yet displaying that soldierly steadfastness which 
lights the last days of the Confederacy with enduring 
glory. That was on" Friday and on Sunday fore- 
noon — it was Palm Sunday — at Appomattox the 
end came. 

Meanwhile, Davis with his Cabinet had gone to 
Greensboro, North Carolina, to be near Johnston and 
Beauregard. Young Robert E. Lee, who had been 
cut off in the retreat, had made his way thither and 
was in the room with Davis when the official despatch 
announcing his father's surrender was received. In 
his ''Recollections" of his father young Lee says: 
''After reading it he [Davis] handed it without com- 
ment to us; then turning away, he silently wept 
bitter tears." 

Jehovah! Designer of the starry firmament, this 
green world and human nature, that fountain which 
begins to play when what we dearly love is gone 
forever seems to testify to your live and daily com- 
passion for us poor mortals! 

That night Davis having sent word that he wanted 
to see them, Johnston and Beam'egard came to his 
room where he and his Cabinet were assembled. 
"I have requested you," so writes his Secretary of 
the Navy, Mallory, "to join us this evening that we 
might have the benefit of your views upon the situa- 
tion of the country. Of course, we all feel the magni- 
tude of the moment. Our late disasters are terrible, 



234 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

but I do not think we should regard them as fatal. 
I think we can whip the enemy j^et if our people 
will turn out; we must look at the matter calmly, 
however, and see what there is left for us to do." 
He then turned to Johnston, saying: ''We should 
like to hear your views, General Johnston." John- 
ston blurted out: ''My views are, Sir, that our people 
are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped and 
will not fight," and went on to say that the men 
were deserting in large numbers, and suggested that 
terms for surrender should be asked for. Davis, 
meanwhile, was folding and unfolding a bit of 
paper, and then turned to Beauregard for his views, 
who repUed that he concurred in all that Johnston 
had said. Then followed a silence, Davis' eyes still 
on the bit of paper he was folding and refolding. At 
last, without a sign of impatience either in his 
manner or the expression of his face or tone, he 
asked Johnston if he thought Sherman would give 
terms and if so, to proceed, aHding: "If we can 
accomphsh any good for the country. Heaven 
knows I am not particular as to forms." As we all 
know, Johnston accepted Sherman's terms and 
surrendered his army. 

While these negotiations were going on Davis 
went to Salisbury, North Carolina, accepting the 
hospitality of an Episcopal clergyman. One morning 
while at breakfast the clergyman's httle daughter, 
seven or eight years old, came in crying, "Oh, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 235 

Papa! old Lincoln's coming and going to kill us all." 
Mr. Davis laid down his knife and fork, placed his 
hand on the little girl's head and turning it around 
toward him said, looking into her face: "Oh, no, 
my Uttle lady, you need not fear that; Mr. Lincoln 
is not such a bad man as that; he does not want to 
kill anybody and certainly not a little gii'l like you." 

A few days after came a rumor of Mr. Lincoln's 
assassination but Davis doubted its truthfulness, 
observing, however, that in such a condition of public 
affairs a crime of that kind might be perpetrated. 
When the news was confirmed, Mallory reports him 
as saying: "I certainly had no special regard for Mr. 
Lincoln, but there are a great many men of whose 
end I would much rather hear than his. I fear it will 
be disastrous to our people, and I regret it deeply." 

Upon hearing the unconditional surrender of 
Johnston's and Beauregard's army, Davis set out to 
join the forces still in the field beyond the Mississippi. 
The specie that was in the Confederate treasury, 
amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, was 
transferred from the railway box cars into army 
wagons and, guarded by detachments of Wheeler's 
cavahy, the march began. With Davis rode Mal- 
lory, Reagan, Benjamin and Breckinridge of his 
Cabinet. They crossed the Savannah River on the 
fourth of May; Davis, Mallory and Reagan accom- 
panied by Captain Campbell's company of cavahy, 
pushed on to Washington, Georgia. 



236 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The main body of the escort and train of wagons, 
all under command of Secretary of War Breckin- 
ridge, at last gathered into camp on the Georgia side 
of the river. The members of the escort who had 
left their homes behind them and, hopeless of any 
revival of the war spirit, now turned insi^'bordinate, 
practically demanded a distribution of the specie 
they were guarding. After Breckinridge had reported 
this state of affairs to Davis the treasury was divided, 
the troops then disappeared, and Breckinridge and 
Benjamin struck off for the Florida coast and finally 
reached England. 

On arrival at the little village of Washington, the 
doors of a private house were thrown open to Davis 
and the next day the last Cabinet meeting of the 
Confederacy was held. Mallory bade goodbye to his 
chief; Davis then with Reagan and four or five of his 
personal staff set out for southwestern Georgia. 
Before starting he had a conference with Captain 
Campbell, telling him of his plans and relieving him 
of all obhgations to go any farther, but that he would 
like to have ten volunteers to go with him if they 
felt like doing so; Campbell on notifying his men 
of this request reported that the whole company 
volunteered. Davis selected ten of the big-hearted 
company, joining after a march of two or three 
days Mrs. Davis, her sister Miss Howell, the chil- 
dren and servants, who under the immediate charge of 
the President's private secretary, Burton Harrison, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 237 

and an escort of a few paroled Confederate soldiers, 
had started on their travels several weeks previously. 

On the evening of the second day after overtaking 
them and while preparations were being made to 
leave at daybreak and continue the journey, one of 
Davis' aides, Colonel Preston, who had been to a 
neighboring village, reported that it was rumored a 
band of marauders would attack the camp that 
night. About daybreak, hearing firing, Davis sprang 
to his feet and going out saw that regular soldiers 
and not bandits were making the attack; he went 
back to the tent to notify Mrs. Davis. He picked up 
and put on Mrs. Davis' raglan, mistaking it in the 
dark for his hght overcoat, and as he went out Mrs. 
Davis threw her shawl over his head as a disguise. 
He had advanced but a few steps when a mounted 
soldier, after some angry words from Davis, presented 
his carbine and ordered him to halt. Mrs. Davis 
rushed out and threw her arms about his neck and 
begged the soldier not to kill him. Seeing now all 
hope of escape gone, he quietly turned back and 
seated himself on a fallen tree near the dying-down 
camp fire till the commanding officer of the troops. 
Col. Pritchard, came up, demanding his name and 
surrender. 

A correspondent of Hvely imagination, who was 
not present at the capture, at once telegraphed his 
paper from Macon that Davis had been taken, and 
in women's clothes. Thereupon the cartoonist seized 



238 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

liis pad, and then his pencil pictured Davis accord- 
ingly, much to the exuberant amusement and 
deUght of his enemies. But in time, as usual, truth 
made its way, an4 the cartoonist's testimony was 
ruled out, and now in the periodicals of the past 
they lie petrified, so to speak, like the bones of the 
Saurians of the carboniferous period. 

While on his way to Macon to be delivered to 
General Wilson, whose troops had made the capture, 
he learned that a reward of one hundred thousand 
dollars had been offered for his arrest by President 
Johnson, charging him, Stephens, Clay and others 
with complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. 
He was amazed and indignant. 

On his arrival at Macon, some troops drawn up 
before Wilson's headquarters saluted him ,as he 
passed through their ranks to the door of Wilson's 
hotel. Wilson treated him well; and in the course of 
an extended interview with him referred to the 
President's proclamation for his arrest, when Davis 
replied: ''The man who signed that proclamation 
knew that I would a thousand times rather have 
Abraham Lincoln to deal with as President of the 
United States than to have him." 

Wilson, who had been at West Point as a cadet 
wliile Davis was Secretary of War and Senator, says 
that in his long talk with Davis that, however petu- 
lant he may have been at the time of his capture, 
he had regained complete equanimity and inquired 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 239 

most kindly of his old friends in the West Point 
faculty — Church, Bartlett and Mahan — and that 
he spoke unreservedly and feelingly of Lee, declar- 
ing him to be the ablest, mosL courageous, most 
aggressive and most beloved of all the Confederate 
generals, and that he referred. to Mr. Lincoln and 
his untimely death in terms of respect and kindness. 

At the close of the day Wilson started Davis and 
all his party on a special train for Augusta. Mrs. 
Clay of Alabama, whose husband was included in 
the proclamation as one of the conspirators and had 
^ given himself up conscious of his innocence, says that 
as she entered the car Davis embraced her, saying, 
"This is a sad meeting, Jennie!" and offered her a 
seat beside him. At Augusta, they with Vice- 
President Stephens, General Wheeler and his adju- 
tant-general, were packed in a miserable river boat, 
which took them down the river and around to 
Hilton Head where they were transferred to the 
steamer Clyde, which soon sailed accompanied by the 
war vessel Tuscarora with shotted guns for Fort 
Monroe. Before sailing Mrs. Davis sent a note to 
General Saxton in command at Hilton Head, asking 
him, as an old friend, if he would not take her little 
negro protege Jim Brooks and see to his education 
and welfare. 

Jim, left an orphan in babyhood, Ellen, Mrs. Davis' 
maid, had been a second mother to him, and being 
about Jeff Junior's, age, they had been playmates 



240 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

from the cradle. Shortly before the Clyde sailed, a 
boat from Saxton came along side and by strategem, 
he was induced to go aboard of her, and as she backed 
off, realizing what it meant, he screamed pitifully. 
His playmate, WiUie, Ellen and all cried bitterly as 
they steamed away from the heartbroken, mother- 
less Httle fellow. 

Two days afterward the Tuscarora, her flag flying, 
turned in round Cape Charles with the Clyde, and 
crossing the sunshiny bay, anchored off Fort Monroe. 
There she lay swinging with the tide by her convoy, 
while brick-masons, blacksmiths, and carpenters, 
walled up openings, made heavy doors, and placed 
iron bars in the embrasures of the casemates that 
were to serve as prisons for Clay and Davis. Mean- 
while, Stephens and Reagan were started for Fort 
Warren, Boston Harbor; Wheeler and Davis' staff 
to Fort Delaware; and Burton Harrison, his private 
secretary, to Fort McHenry at Baltimore. 

General Miles, who had been assigned to the com- 
mand of the Fort, at one p.m. of the twenty-second, ■^■- 
set off in a tug accompanied by a squad of soldiers, 
for the Clyde. Davis bade goodbye to his children 
who were crying, but on taking leave of his wife 
whispered: "Try not to weep, they will gloat over 
your grief." On landing at the wharf, Miles, holding 
Davis by the right arm and preceded by a cavalry 
detail, first appeared; behind him was a half-dozen 
soldiers, then came Colonel Pritchard. holding Clay 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 241 

by the right af m, followed by another armed squad. 
The procession crossed the moat, passed through the 
postern, and then to the casemate. Assistant Secre- 
tary of War Dana, who with Halleck overlooked the 
procession, says: '^ Davis bore himself with a haughty 
attitude." — This reminds me of a remark he made to 
one of his prominent officers in Richmond who had 
just had an interview with a distressed poor woman 
and had to bring the matter to Davis' attention, he 
said to him: ''Never be haughty to the humble, nor 
humble to the haughty." — Davis was conducted into 
the inner room of the casemate. There was a sentry 
before each door leading into the outer room, an 
iron hospital bedstead, a stool table, a chair, a 
movable stool closet, and a Bible; two sentinels 
outside the doors, an officer and two sentries in the 
outer room with instructions to see the prisoner every 
fifteen minutes, the outer door of all locked and key 
in charge of the officer of the guard; a line of sentries 
to cut off all access to the casemate, another line 
beyond the moat and another on top of the parapet 
over the casemate; and yet, with all these precautions 
they put manacles on him! 

Davis, left alone, walked to the barred embrasure 
and asked the direction it faced; neither of the two 
sentinels would answer; he sat down. And this was 
the Fort Monroe whose guns had thundered for 
him when Secretary of War and whose troops had 
saluted with arms and colors — colors that had 



242 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

waved over him as a Cadet and that he had helped 
to carry to victory at Monterey and Buena Vista. 

That afternoon, Dana, notifying the War Depart- 
ment of Davis' and Clay's incarceration, said, "I 
have not given orders to have them placed in irons, 
as Halleck seemed opposed to it, but General Miles 
is instructed to have fetters ready if he thinks them 
necessary." Two days afterward. Miles reported 
to Dana, ''Yesterday I directed the irons to be put 
on Davis' ankles, which he violently resisted, but 
he became more quiet afterward. His hands are 
unencumbered." 

The following day Davis, as well as Clay, asked 
if beside the Bible they might have the Prayer Book 
and some tobacco. Miles referred the, jreguest to 
Halleck who answered "Yes." Tobacco, delicious 
weed, and my comforter on many a page of this 
biography, you were in mighty good company that 
night — the Prayer Book and the Bible. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Davis, the children, and Mrs. 
Clay, after being searched and their baggage thor- 
oughly examined for evidence of their husbands' 
alleged crimes, were on their way to Savannah aboard 
the Clyde in charge of an officer who treated them 
well. 

The manacles began to chafe Davis' ankles, and 
the cruelty of it all got wing through the reporters' 
accounts from Fort Monroe, furnishing afternoon 
editions with startling headlines. Stanton translated 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 243 

the deep headlines as reproach and telegraphed 
Miles, ''Please report whether irons have or have 
not been placed on Jefferson Davis. If they have, 
when was it done and for what reason, and remove 
them." Miles replied: ''I directed that anklets be 
put on his ankles, which would not interfere with 
his walking but would prevent his running should 
he endeavor to escape. In the meantime I have 
changed the wooden doors for grated iron ones with 
locks, and the anklets have been removed." 

For one hundred and ten nights with two soldiers, 
a bright light in his room, two sentinels in the 
adjoining room walking their posts and relieved 
every two hours with ratthng of arms on the brick 
floors; the trailing sabre of the officer of the guard 
who, beside looking after posting the rehefs, had to 
take a look at the prisoner every fifteen minutes, 
how much unbroken sleep did or could a night offer? 

His food was sent in, but neither knife or fork 
allowed for fear he might cut his throat or puncture 
a vein and cheat the gallows. The glaring light on 
his eye which had never quite recovered from the 
attack that had destroyed the other, keyed as he 
was, was intense. In knowing what we do now, the 
question might be put in all earnestness. Why did"* 
he have to suffer as he did? 

It is only fair in behalf of Miles, Stanton, and 
Judge Advocate-General Holt who had to deal 
with Davis officially, to say that no one not living 



244 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

at the time can conceive of the depth of the passion 
over the assassination of Lincohi and the barbarous 
attempt on the Ufe of Seward. Convulsion after 
convulsion of feeling took place all over the North, 
attributing the crime to the South, and especially 
lajdng it at the door of its leaders and calling for 
their execution as traitors and murderers. Sumner 
in the midst of this frenzy wrote to a friend in 
England: "You enjoy the overthrow of belligerent 
slavery. In assassinating our good President it 
acted naturally, logically and consistently, and yet 
there are foreigners here who are astonished that 
Jefferson Davis can be thought guilty of such an 
atrocity." This letter fairly represented how passion, 
like a forest fire before a high wind, was sweeping 
the country. 

Moreover, while Davis and Clay were waiting 
on the Clyde till the casemates were made ready 
the Military Commission for the trial of the assassi- 
nators was in session, the newspapers fiUing column 
after column with the testimony and vivid descrip- 
tions of the criminals, all of which the public read 
with deepening horror. 

Again, among the earliest witnesses was a shrewd, 
impecunious lawyer, Conover by name, who testified 
early in the trial that Davis and Clay, from his own 
knowledge, were implicated in bringing about the 
assassination. Later he went to Holt, the Judge 
Advocate-General and told him he could furnish 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 245 

evidence, written and verbal, to establish the truth 
of his testimony before the Commission. Holt 
believed him^nd Conover began at once to organize 
a gang of perjurers who supplied Holt with sworn 
depositions confirming his allegations. Holt laid 
these depositions before Stanton; he also believed 
them true and it was not until eleven months later, 
that, upon the confession of one of this gang, the 
discovery was made of the utter fraud which Conover 
had perpetrated. While this testimony remained 
unchallenged, and the fires kindled by the assassi- 
nation of Lincoln still burning fiercely, it is only fair 
to Stanton, Miles and Holt to bear these circum- 
stances in mind. Not to have been influenced by 
them in dealing with Davis and Clay is more than 
can be expected of human nature. 

Contributing to the harshness of Davis' treatment 
and above all to root deeply a calloused unfavorable 
opinion, during the trial of Wirtz, the prosecuting 
attorney from the Bureau of Military Justice offered 
testimony to prove that Davis was as much, if not 
more, to blame than Wirtz for the cruelties and 
deaths at Anderson ville. 

The trial began on the twenty-third of August 
and Wirtz was executed on the tenth of November. 
On the night before his execution two men sought 
an interview with him in his cell and one of them 
gave him to understand that by a confession impli- 
cating Davis with the responsibility of the treatment 



246 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of prisoners, they had power to save him from the 
gallows. That same night his counsel, a Mr. Schade, 
of Washington, says: ''Some parties came to the 
confessor of Wirtz, Reverend Father Boyle, and 
also to me as his counsel, one of them informing me 
that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirtz 
that if he would implicate Davis with the atrocities 
committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be 
commuted. The messenger requested me to inform 
Wirtz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told 
Wirtz next morning what had happened. Captain 
Wirtz simply and quietly replied, 'Mr. Schade, you 
know that I have always told you that I do not 
know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no 
connection with me as to what was done at Anderson- 
ville. I would not become a traitor to him or any 
one else even to save my life'." 

This statement of Wirtz' counsel is confirmed by 
a letter to Mr. Davis from Father Boyle. "I know 
that on the evening of the day before the execution 
of Major Wirtz, a man visited me on the part of a 
Cabinet officer to inform me that Major Wirtz 
would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson 
Davis in the cruelties of Andersonville," 

Wirtz, his counsel, and Father Boyle are in the 
grave. No one to this day knows the name of the 
Cabinet officer, -jor the mysterious messenger who 
under the shades of night made his way to and from 
Wirtz' cell. It was all a horrible, horrible business, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 247 

I and we think a November night's stars never looked 
down on a wickeder one. 

Relative to the charges against Davis of cruelty 
to prisoners, it is opportune to say that Mrs. Davis 
having appealed to Horace Greely and he realizing, 
through the sensitiveness of his nature what Davis, 
guilty or innocent, must be suffering in prison, 
asked Judge Shea of New York, if he would not 
try to secure an early trial for Davis. Shea was 
unwilling to give his professional services unless 
satisfied that the charge against him of famine and 
cruelty to Northern prisoners was untrue. 

It so happened that the Confederate archives 
were in Canada, and at the request of Greely, 
Governor Andrew and Vice-President Wilson Shea 
went to Montreal and there examined the records. 
He returned to New York convinced that Davis, 
directly and indirectly, was guiltless of indifference 
to the welfare of prisoners that fell into Confederate 
hands. Whereupon Greely threw his whole heart 
into an effort to secure a trial at once, let the charges 
be what they might, for as an American citizen, 
Davis was entitled to a speedy trial. O'Connor of 
New York had already volunteered his services, 
and from then on to the end became the fearless 
legal champion for Davis. When Conover's malicious 
charges were exposed and one after another of the 
real facts became known, a reaction set in, and 

: President Johnson said in an interview with Mrs. 



248 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis that he was satisfied that Davis was not a 
party to the assassination of Lincoln. So much then 
as to the intensity of public feeling and its reaction 
on Stanton and Holt who had to deal officially with 
the character of Davis' imprisonment at its beginning. 

It will be remembered that the Secretary of Wai: 
in a somewhat peremptory despatch ordered General 
Miles to unshackle Davis. The order was executed 
on the forenoon of a Sunday, May 28, and in the 
afternoon Dr. Craven, who had been assigned to 
look after the health of Davis and Clay, went to 
his casemate. "Immediately on entering," says 
Craven in his "Prison Life of Davis," "Mr. Davis 
rose from his seat, both hands extended and his 
eyes filled with tears. He was evidently about to 
say something, but checked himself; or, was checked 
by a rush of emotion, and sat down on his bed." 

A month later General Miles entered the casemate 
while the doctor was making his professional call 
and announced that Davis would be allowed an 
hour's exercise on the ramparts; and that afternoon, 
General Miles supporting him on one side and the 
officer of the day on the other, followed by four 
armed guards, he enjoyed his first breath of open 
air and the sight from the green parapets of the 
coming and going ships, the low, distant, dreaming 
coast line and the wide expanse of softly heaving sea. 

On one of these walks he met Clay and exchanged 
greetings in French with him, which alarmed the 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 249 

guard who did not understand the language, and 
they were not allowed to pass each other or meet 
again. Davis, struck with Clay's appearance, 
inquired with much sympathy for his fellow-prisoner, 
and Dr. Craven says this: ''Let me here remark 
^at despite a certain exterior cynicism of manner, 
no patient has ever crossed my path who, suffering 
so much himself, appeared to feel so warmly and 
tenderly for others." 

President Johnson, to satisfy himself as to Davis' 
condition and treatment, sent McCulloch, his 
Secretary of Treasury, to Fort Monroe to see Davis. 
McCulloch says: "I was most favorably impressed 
by his manners and conversation, . . . hearing 
Davis' account of his treatment, I felt as he did that 
for a time he had been dastardly treated ... he 
had the bearing of a born and high-bred gentleman." 

Says Craven, ' I called with Captain Evans, officer 
of the day, on the twenty-eighth of August. Davis 
was then suffering great prostration from erysipelas 
and a carbuncle, and was in low spirits, — fearing 
that he should die without opportunity of rebutting 
in public trial the imputed stigma of having had a 
share in the conspiracy to assassinate Mr. Lincoln 
and leave the reproach on his children. 

"Of Mr. Lincoln he then spoke, not in affected 
terms of regard and admiration, but paying a simple 
and sincere tribute to his goodness of character and 
honesty of purpose . . . also to his official purity 



250 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and freedom from avarice . . . that the Southern 
papers in the beginning of the war had labored to 
render Lincoln abhorrent and contemptible, but 
that such efforts were against his judgment." 

"They charge me with crime, Doctor, but God 
knows my innocence. I endorsed no measure that 
was not justified by the laws of war. Failure is all 
forms of guilt in one to men who occupied my posi- 
tion. Should I die, repeat this for the sake of my 
people, my dear wife, and my poor darling children. 
Tell the world I only loved America, and that in 
following my State, I was only carrying out doctrines 
received from revered hps in my early youth and 
adopted by my judgment as the conviction of riper 
years." 

Vice-President Stephens and Reagan, Postmaster- 
General in Davis' Cabinet, were released on parole 
in October, and Clay a few months later. 

In the spring of 1866, Congress appointed a 
committee, headed by Boutwell of Massachusetts, 
to report on the facts in Davis' case, and recommend 
his trial by a Commission or the Courts. The War 
Department turned over all the evidence it had 
to the Committee, who in turn put it into the hands 
of Lieber, the sun of whose fame as a writer, scholar, 
jurist, has not yet set. Lieber says, among other 
things, that the Judiciary Committee had asked him 
to report upon whether or not there was any evidence 
that Jefferson Davis or the Richmond government 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 251 

knew about the assassination plots, and whether or 
not there was any circumstantial evidence confirming 
things that appeared in the trials of Lincoln's 
assassins. ''Some 270,000 letters have been examined 
for this and other purposes. There remain about 
60,000 more to be examined and verified . . . Davis 
will not be found guilty and we shall stand there 
completely beaten." 

Meanwhile Davis' counsel were pushing more and 
more ardently for a trial and at last a day was set, 
and on the tenth orders were issued directing General 
Burton, Miles successor, to produce his prisoner 
before the United States District Court in Richmond, 
on Monday, May 13. 

During the week of the tenth, two events took 
place worthy of record, — Ex-President Pierce made 
a visit to Davis and we can easily imagine their 
greeting, for they loved each other well; they had 
not only shared the dangers of battle fields in Mexico, 
but also four years of trying official relations as 
President and Cabinet officer. 

The other event was the marriage of Ellen, Mrs, 
Davis' maid, and Frederick Maginnis, of whom 
Mrs. Davis says, ''a colored man, a courteous, 
refined gentleman in his instincts." He had offered 
his services gratuitously to Mrs. Davis on her 
arrival at Savannah from Fort Monroe, but she 
paid him wages regularly, which he divided with 
his old mistress in Georgia. "He was a second 



252 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Providence to us by his care of Mr. Davis after I 
was allowed to go to him," says Mrs. Davis. 

On one occasion when asked by a curious woman 
who had made an excursion to the Fort the where- 
abouts of ''Jeff" he answered, with a bow, "I am 
sorry. Madam, not to be able to tell you where he is. 
I do not know such a person." "Are you not his 
servant? " she inquired. ''No, Madam," he answered, 
"you are quite mistaken, I have the honor to serve 
Ex-President Davis." "What this judicious, cap- 
able, delicate-minded man did for us could not be 
computed in money or told in words; he and his 
gentle wife took the sting out of many indignities 
offered to us in our misfortune. They were both 
objects of affection and esteem to Mr. Davis as 
long as he lived," so says Mrs. Davis. 

On Friday, May 11, the United States Marshal 
accompanied by Judge Ould gave General Burton 
the order of the War Department to bring Davis 
before the Court in Richmond. Saturday morning, 
Davis, arrayed in a mixed black suit, bade good-bye 
to the officers of the garrison and then, with Mrs. 
Davis, General Burton, Dr. Craven, and Burton 
Harrison, his affectionate private secretary, boarded 
the John Sylvester and started up the James, and 
the green parapets of Fort Monroe, where for just 
eight days short of two years he had been confined, 
faded away with their over-streaming colors. When 
the boat reached Brandon Landing the Misses 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 253 

Harrison came aboard, greeting Davis with swim- 
ming eyes. They arrived at Richmond about six 
o'clock and the party drove to the Spottswood 
Hotel, and at every doorway and window on the 
way were smiling faces wafting welcome home again. 
The street was packed in front of the hotel, and 
when he and Mrs. Davis got out of the carriages, 
some one shouted ''Hats off, Virginians!" He was 
assigned to the very same rooms that he had occupied 
on -arrival from Montgomery six years before. There 
were flowers there to welcome him and old friends 
came in, their faces blooming with a deep joy, tears 
hanging on their lashes or sparkling there as we 
sometimes see the gathered dew in the early morning. 
The next day, Sunday, he stayed in his rooms, 
receiving callers who came in on the way from 
church. 

At eleven o'clock Monday, he was taken to the 
coiirt room in the Custom House, a room about 
forty feet square — and already every seat was 
filled, while outside were great crowds of white and 
black. Davis was first placed in the prisoner's dock, 
and the Marshal, with fine feeling, asked Harrison 
to go and sit beside him. Later the courtesy was 
extended by conducting him to the counsel's table 
within the bar to a seat beside O'Connor, a smallish 
man with thin gray hair, brilliant eyes and a firm 
but low voice. By his side sat Reed of Philadelphia, 
Judge Shea, Ould and Beverly Tucker of Virginia. 



254 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

On the other side of the table sat Evarts, spare, 
pale and grave, Chandler and Wells representing 
the United States. 

There was a sensation when an elderly man wear- 
ing glasses and dressed in an antiquated black suit,' 
his black silk cravat in wild entanglement, and 
totally unselfconscious of place or occasion, walked 
up and took a seat beside Evarts. He brought in 
an atmosphere of natural gentleness with him. It 
was Horace Greely who had done more than any 
man living to arouse his countrymen against slavery 
and who was the first to ask for mercy to Davis and 
every Southerner who had borne arms in behalf of 
the Confederacy. 

And may I at this point say that were I to his- 
torically duplicate .the Constellation of Orion, I 
should put Lincoln for the upper star, Davis the 
lower, Grant, Greely and Lee in the belt. 

With Greely came in Augustus Schell of New York, 
with a benevolent face — a life-long Democrat, 
representing himself and Vanderbilt on the bail 
bond of $100,000 which it was understood would 
be called for in case of Davis' release for future 
trial. 

Presently the judge. Underwood, entered from 
the lobby, whereupon the Marshal cried out, ''Hear 
ye, hear ye! The United States District Court is 
now opened and silence is commanded. God save 
the United States!" 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 255 

Burton then brought Davis before the Court and 
reading the order he had received, the Marshal took 
charge of the accused, who then took a seat beside 
O'Connor. 

The Judge proceeded to deUver a lecture on the 
wickedness of rebeUion, the magnitude of treason, 
etc., during which unusual proceedings, Davis never 
raised his eyes. O'Connor then addressed the Court 
to the effect that the defence was ready for the 
trial of the case. Evarts then notified the Court 
that the Government was not ready for trial but 
was willing the accused should go on bail. There- 
upon the bail bond was offered. Greely was the 
first to sign it and then Schell. Davis went at once 
to Greely, grasped his hand and in a few words 
earnestly thanked him. Greely accepted his thanks 
with an abashed expression, his countenance, how- 
ever, filled with an inward pleasure, and the song 
of his pillow that night was like that of the Good 
Samaritan. 

When the bail bond was fully signed, the Court 
released Davis, and a mighty shout went up from 
inside and outside the court room. Hundreds of 
colored men wished to take Davis' hand, and a 
mighty mass, cheering and waving hats escorted 
him back to the Spottswood, and on entering his 
room it was redolent with the scent of flowers, and 
old friends were there to give him their hands. 

That afternoon he and Mrs. Davis drove out to 



256 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Hollywood and placed roses and violets on the grave 
of their little boy who had been accidentally killed 
by falling from the upper veranda. A prayer of 
thankfulness was held in their room, led by his old 
friend Dr. Minnegerode, and that night he and 
Mrs. Davis started for Montreal, where the children 
were at school. 

The thoughtful of the North, and not few in 
numbers, who, during the two years he had been in 
prison had feared the results of a trial with its 
frightful possibilities of a gallows throwing its 
shadow across the sky of the country's past, drew 
a deep sigh of relief over his release and thanked 
God that mankind had outgrown the old barbaric 
notion that the sleep of the dead, to be unbroken, 
demanded a sacrifice. 

But the companions of vengeance, on whose ears 
the voice of compassion broke in vain now, like a 
pack of thwarted timber wolves, set up a dismal 
howl over the escape of their prey and at once 
turned on Greely, snarling and showing their teeth. 

The President of the Union Club of New York 
wrote to him that a special meeting of the Club had 
been asked for to take into consideration his conduct 
in going on the bail bond of Davis and desired to 
know what evening would be convenient. Greely 
at once replied: 

"Gentlemen: I shall not attend your meeting this 
evening. You evidently regard me as a weak sen- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 257 

timentalist misled by a maudlin philosophy. I 
arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads who 
would like to be useful to a great and good cause, 
but do not know how. Your attempt to base a 
great enduring party on the hate and wrath neces- 
sarily engendered by bloody civil war is as though 
you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had 
somehow drifted into a tropical sea. I tell you here 
tha^i out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of 
human kind, your children will select my going to 
Richmond and signing that bail bond as the wisest 
act. ... So long as any is at heart opposed to the 
National Unity ... I shall do my best to deprive 
him of power. ... So long as any man was seeking 
to overthrow our government he was my enemy; 
from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he 
was my formerly erring countryman." 

While Davis was in prison, Greely was writing 
his ''American Conflict," and the second volume 
was in press when he went on Davis' bail bond; 
thereupon thousands of the subscribers cancelled 
their subscriptions throwing heavy losses on his 
publishers. 

Lee wrote to Davis, June 1, 1867: "My dear Mr. 
Davis: You can conceive better than I can express, 
the misery which your friends have suffered from 
your long imprisonment. To none has this been 
more painful than to me; and the impossibihty of 
affording relief has added to my distress. Your 



258 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

release has lifted a load from my heart which I have 
not words to tell, and my daily prayer to the Great 
Author of the world is that He may shield you 
from all evil, and give you that peace which the 
world cannot take away. That the rest of your 
days may be triumphantly happy is the sincere 
and earnest wish of your most obedient, faithful 
friend and servant. 

R. E. Lee." 

The winter cUmate of Canada proving too severe 
for Davis in his weak condition, toward the end 
of the year, by advice of his physician, he went to 
Havana, and after the holidays to New Orleans. 
The people thronged to greet him, giving him a 
reception that was spontaneous and tender. At 
first in the furrowed lines of his face they saw what 
he had gone through and were touched with sym- 
pathy, but on meeting him and noting the same 
old dignity in his bearing, the same noble lustre of 
fortitude and kindliness in his eye, and his voice 
still keyed with its courteous, appealing tones, they 
gave him their hands and cheers that went to his 
heart. To them he was the embodiment of the 
Southern gentleman and the champion of the Lost 
Cause hallowed by many a deed of bravery and 
death on the field. 

From New Orleans he went to his old plantation, 
now a scene of neglect, conflagration, waste and 
pillage; stables, flower beds, roses yellow and red, 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 259 

gardens, all the labors of his early life blotted out, 
and desolation, with her feet in the ashes, sat at 
the foot of lone chimneys croaking to the silence of 
the one-time happy dooryard and blooming cotton 
fields. 

The aged slaves, who still clung to the old home 
quarters, flocked to see him, glad, truly glad to take 
the hand of the proud, kind master of their youth. 

For the sake of his health, he went to Europe 
with his family and received many civilities from 
members of the English nobility. Could he go now, 
from the British officers and soldiers who served 
with the grandsons of the Confederacy and the 
grandsons of the Union when they broke the German 
line we think many a high cheer would welcome 
him and should Grant's spirit appear at his side, 
applause would break from Westminster and where- 
ever the sea strikes the shores of Old England. 

While in Paris, Napoleon III sent a staff officer 
offering an audience, but not wishing to say anything 
uncivil, Davis begged to be excused, as he felt that 
Napoleon had not been sincere in his dealing with 
the Confederacy. 

On his return he accepted the presidency of a 
Southern Life Insurance Company with headquarters 
in Memphis, whose generous-hearted people offered 
to buy him a handsome residence which, from a 
delicate sense of propriety, he decHned, although 
deeply appreciating their liberality. Owing to a 



260 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

reckless system of issuing policies and the prevalence 
of yellow fever, the company was soon in trouble? 
and after putting everything he could command into 
it to save it, the company wound up with heavy 
losses to himself and stockholders. 

General Robert Ransom of North Carolina and 
the Confederate army, in his "Reminiscences of 
Davis" relates the following incident while on a 
visit to Davis in Memphis, prefacing it by stating: 
"At the table he said grace, or asked a blessing, first 
seating himself and then with bowed head, in silence 
making the invocation. 

"During one of my visits, just after being seated 
an unusual commotion was heard in the passage 
leading to the dining room, and almost instantly 
in rushed the bright, fair-haired Willie, his youngest 
son, a lad of eight or ten years, followed by a half- 
dozen or more about his own age whom Wfllie had 
brought in to dinner. He rapidly told of some gar- 
dening or other work he had in hand and which he 
wished finished at a certain time and, not being 
able to accomplish it so soon himself, had gone into 
the streets and gathered a promiscuous party of 
laborers, completed the task voluntarily assumed, 
and now wanted dinner for his co-workers. I could 
easily discern the feeling of his father; with great 
cheerfulness and an expression of pride and satis- 
faction, Mr. Davis aided in providing for his fine 
boy's guests, and with dehcate tact and discriminat- 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 261 

ing conversation soon had each httle fellow as com- 
fortable and unembarrassed as if on a picnic." 

Soon thereafter this son, William Howell, died 
with diphtheria, and in October, 1878, when the 
yellow fever raged in Memphis, his only surviving 
son, Jefferson junior, twenty-one years old and who 
had become a companion of his aged father, fell a 
victim, and his death struck deep. 

Some time previous, Mrs. Dawson, a friend, had 
sold to Davis her home at Beauvoir, Mississippi. 
It had a broad veranda, flowered approaches, and 
stood amid an open grove of live oaks close by the 
shore of the Gulf lapping its beach day and night 
with soft murmurs. He was there when this grief 
fell upon him, writing the "Rise and Fall of the 
Confederacy." He laid down his pen and for days 
sat in silence till that blessed Comforter which feels 
for us all reached out a hand, and he took up his 
pen again. 

He who would see how the mind of Jefferson 
Davis worked under the shadow of grief and a 
raging storm of calumny; how deep in it lay the 
foundation of his belief in the sovereignty of States; 
with what fairness he dealt with the four years of 
battling campaigns in the discharge of the duties of 
the Presidency, let him read the ''Rise and Fall of 
the Confederacy." 

It was begun in 1878; it was finished in 1881, 
and here is the way it ended. Mrs. Davis in her 



262 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

"Memoirs" says: "It was four o'clock, and I had 
been writing since eight o'clock in the evening, when 
Mr. Davis dictated : ' In asserting the right of seces- 
sion it has not been my wish to incite to its exercise. 
I recognize the fact that the war showed it to be 
impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong; 
and now, that it may not be again attempted, and 
the Union may promote the general welfare, it is 
needful that the truth, the whole truth, should be 
known, so that crimination and recrimination may 
forever cease, and then on the basis of fraternity 
and faithful regards for the rights of the States, there 
may be written on the arch of the Union Este 
perpetua.' 

I looked up after a momentary silence to remind 
him that he had forgotten to continue, and he 
smilingly said, 'I think I am done.' And so he 
finished his life's work for his Countrymen." 

In every great moving symphony there is one 
impelling note and bar that is repeated and 
re-repeated. We think the candor of this final state- 
ment in the "Rise and Fall of the Confederacy," 
is such a note and bar in the character of Davis. 

A few years later in an address before the Legis- 
lature of Mississippi, after referring to his boyhood 
in the State and his ambition to do something that 
would rebound to its honor and glory, he touched 
again that high, manly chord, saying: "Our people 
have accepted the decree, it therefore behooves them 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 263 

to promote the general welfare of the Union, to 
show the world that hereafter, as heretofore, the 
patriotism of our people is not measured by line of 
latitude and longitude but is as broad as the obliga- 
tions they have assumed and embraces the whole 
of our ocean-bound domain." 

Meanwhile Southern mothers, wives and sisters 
had estabhshed the touching and beautiful ceremony 
ot Decoration Day. The effect of this ceremony 
with its processions and music, old veterans in their 
gray uniforms, here and there a surviving color- 
bearer who had secretly stripped the flag from its 
staff on surrendering, and had brought it forth 
marching proudly as it waved over him again on 
his way to the graves of his comrades — all this was 
to endear the memory of the Confederacy and to 
lift Davis in his old age, to a throne as it were, of 
affection and reverence. For had he not been their 
intrepid never-quailing standard-bearer, the exponent 
and representative of ideas for which he and they 
had staked all? The result was, that a longing to 
see him grew, invitations weighted with tenderness 
poured in thenceforth to attend the dedications of 
monuments and celebrations of one kind and another. 
On one of these occasions in addressing delegates of 
the Southern Hietorical Society at New Orleans, he 
said: "As for me, I speak only for myself, our Cause 
was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has 
come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted 



264 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

on me, all that my country was to suffer, I would do 
it again. If I be asked, as is possible, Why do you 
wish to perpetuate these bitter memories [that is 
the historic records of the war], I say in no spirit 
of vengeance, with no desire for vainglory, with no 
wish for sectional exultation, but that the posterity 
of men such as I have described may rise equal to 
their parents, higher if possible, and that the South 
may exhibit for all time to come the noble qualities 
which her sons have hitherto manifested." 

In that same address he said, speaking of the 
Southern troops: "Throughout the war, I never 
went into an army without finding their camp 
engaged in prayer." Our men on the picket line at 
Petersburg heard their hymns and prayers more 
than once during the winter of '64-'65. 

About this time a teacher in a Southern college 
for girls wrote Davis for a sentiment at an exercise, 
and he sent her the following: 

'^For my fellow-countrywomen: 

Be ye slow to anger, swift to forgive, and hold 
fast that charity that raises the lowly with the self- 
respect that stoops not to the haughty." 

About this time too. General Grant was dying at 
Mt. McGregor, and the Boston Globe asked Davis 
to prepare a criticism on Grant's career. He replied 
declining for the following reasons: 

"First, General Grant is dying. •♦ 

Second, Though he invaded our Country, it was 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 265 

lath an open hand, and, so far as I know, he abetted 
leither arson, nor pillage, and has since the war, 

believe, shown no malignity to Confederates either 
f the military or civil service. 

Therefore instead of seeking to distm'b the quiet 
f his closing hours, I would, if it were in my power, 
ontribute to the peace of his mind and the comfort 
f his body. 

Jefferson Davis." 

It will be remembered that Buckner and Joseph 
]. Johnston of the Confederate army were pall- 
earers at Grant's funeral, a tribute to his character 
eyond measm'e, and a glorious example also of the 
atural magnanimity of our country — North and 
outh. 

As the fires of the war burned down there was 
1 the broad-minded of the North a desire to see and 
3 know Mr. Davis. We will give but two of the 
lany recorded interviews with him; and first that 
F Massachusetts' greatest all-round man of his 
ay, my friend, Charles Francis Adams, who in 
is autobiography says: 

"Recurring to Fessenden and what he told me 
[ my grandfather, Jefferson Davis was on that 
)pic the most outspoken of all I met. [He is relating 
Lcidents of a visit to Washington before the war.] 

do not, indeed, with the exception of Joshua R. 
iddings, remember any public man of that epoch 



266 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

who seemed to feel such a genuine sense of apprecia- 
tion for J. Q. Adams as Jefferson Davis, and he 
repeatedly put himself on record on the subject. 
Davis, by the way, impressed me that winter more 
agreeably than any Southern man I met. I did not 
see him again until in May, 1885, I called on him 
at his home at Beauvoir, near New Orleans; but 
to me he was a distinctly attractive as well as 
interesting personality. Of medium height and 
spare figure, he had an essentially Southern face, 
but he was very much of a gentleman in his address 
— courteous, unpretending and yet quietly dignified. 
A man in no way aggressive, yet not to be trifled 
with. I instinctively liked him; and regret extremely 
that it was not my good fortune, then or later, to 
see more of him." 

McClure in his ''Recollections of Half a Century" 
on a visit at Beauvoir says that Mr. Davis in reply 
to a question as to terms he might have offered or 
received to end the conflict, said: "He could not of 
his own motion have made any proposition that 
did not involve the perpetuity of the Confederacy." 
He concisely stated the difference between the 
Federal and the Confederate Governments; that 
the President of the former was practically a sov- 
ereign, while the President of the Confederacy 
represented a nation founded on individual States 
and, as such, he could not make a peace that denied 
their sovereignty. 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 267 

''I shall never forget," says McClure, a life-long 
Republican, ''the earnest and pathetic conclusion 
of his remarks about Lincoln, when he said sub- 
stantially 'Next to the failure of the Confederacy, 
the darkest day the South has seen was the day of 
Lincoln's assassination ' . " 

Such then, was the impression Davis' personality 
— that has been my chief aim to set forth, — made 
on two keen, manly observers who had fought 
against him. 

And now, as I wish to hold the reader's respect 
and that I may not be open to the charge of delib- 
erately withholding from him adverse opinions of 
Mr. Davis, let me give the severest estimate, con- 
sidering its source, that was ever made of him. 
It is to be found in a letter from John A. Campbell, 
Confederate assistant secretary of war, written from 
Fort Pulaski while undergoing arrest for comphcity 
in the assassination of Lincoln, to Ex- Judge B. R. 
Curtis of Boston with whom, before the war he had 
served on the bench of the United States Supreme 
Court. They had been fellow-democrats, and the 
main and declared purpose of the letter, was to 
enlist Curtis' influence with Andrew Johnson, 
Lincoln's successor to the Presidency, for his release 
on parole and a speedy trial. 

After a resume of his efforts to prevent secession 
and the grounds in justification for giving it his 
support, namely, "It appeared to be a war upon 



268 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the political and government within the Confederate 
states," he went on to say: 

"But he [Davis] was unfitted to manage a revol- 
ution or to conduct an administration. Slow, pro- 
crastinating, obstructive, filled with petty scruples 
and doubts, and wanting in clear, strong, intrepid 
judgment, a vigorous resolution and a generous 
and self-sacrificing nature, he became in the closing 
part of the war, an incubus and mischief." 

Campbell had been, as stated in his letter, an 
original and ardent opponent of secession : convinced 
of the North's overpowering numbers and resources 
in case of war. To whatsoever degree the South's, 
early victories may have sapped this conviction, 
on the fall of Vicksburg and the defeat of Lee at 
Gettysburg it regained full vigor and soon blew 
out hope's candles of ultimate success. Born with 
delicacy of feeling, long, keen foresight and haunted 
by this foreboding prepossession, it is easy to 
reaUze his state of mind as the war -drew on 
and he came in full view of inevitable and utter 
defeat. 

To him worn, grieved and hopeless, every hour 
the Confederacy lived thereafter was only a painful 
prolongation of mental agony. "In the light of 
the inevitable, why in Heaven's name not ask for 
terms?" that, that we beUeve was the appeal of 
his troubled, judicial mind. In times of revolution 
and faced with a national crisis there is no mind so 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 269 

worried and we think so helpless as the fully devel- 
oped judicial mind, for it is born wingless. 

One can easily see, then, how Davis' defiant, 
unconquerable will must have annoyed and provoked 
Mr. Campbell as day after day he continued the 
struggle. Truly, to a mind in the state of Judge 
Campbell's, Davis must have been "an incubus and 
mischief." 

But refined, able, gifted and high-minded as 
Mr. Campbell was, and inevitable as defeat was, 
could the South with honor and self-respect have 
laid down its arms and acknowledged defeat? Could 
Lee's old army of Northern Virginia have broken 
away, gone off home leaving him and Davis standing 
alone? Oh no, no! For the rearing of that arch of 
triumph that spans North and South, its abutments 
on Gettysburg and Appomattox, it was better, far 
better, we think, that Lee and his army should 
stand by Davis, march on to Appomattox and there 
lay down their arms in honorable surrender, cheering 
Lee when he returned from accepting Grant's gen- 
erous terms, and he with tears in his eyes saying 
he had done the best he could for them. Yes, he 
and Davis had done the best they could for the men 
who had carried the colors of the Confederacy on 
so many fields. That is the reason why Sherman's 
army, the Army of the Potomac and the country at 
large is proud of the victory won, a victory won by 
gallant men over gallant men, and above all, the 



270 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

fruits of that victory, that triumphant arch of good 
will, already spoken of, spanning North and South. 

History has no page, so far as I am aware, that 
equals the achievement embodied in that arch by 
any nation in the world, namely, the people of the 
sections after four years of bitter war, overmatching 
their bravery by becoming friends once more before 
old age had whitened the hair of the men who wore 
the blue and the gray. 

Next to Grant I believe that Davis by the friend- 
liness of his bearing and candor in intercourse with 
Northern men of influence and character, by urging 
his people on all occasions to obey the laws, and 
above all by refraining in addressing associations 
of veterans from saying anything to re-kindle the 
fagots of animosities, contributed more than any 
one man to the accomplishment of that great national 
achievement. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

And now with this background of cadet, army, 
plantation, Cabinet and Congressional hfe, of leader- 
ship of the Confederacy, of defeat, all suffused in 
his old age with the light of a brave integrity and 
good feeHng for friend and foe, he waited the sunset 
of this mortal hfe. 

About this time, and when old age is prone to 
dwell on the past, he wrote the following letter to 
one of his former slaves: "Both Mr. and Mrs. Davis 
are thankful to their old friend Milo Cooper for the 
lemons and for his congratulations. Mr. Davis 
passed his eightieth birthday in good health and 
spirits for one of his age, and is cheered by the kind 
spirit evinced by so many friends. 
Your friends, 
Jefferson and Mrs. Davis." 

When Cooper heard a few months later that 
Mr. Davis was dangerously ill, he set outjon foot 
from Florida for New Orleans to be by the bedside 
of his old master. 

By the way, the explanation for the friendship 
of every colored man who had ever known Davis 
may be found in the following incident related by 
the President of Millsap College, Mississippi. ''I got 

271 



272 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

a lesson in the treatment of negroes when I was 
returning South from Harvard. I stopped in 
Washington and called on Jefferson Davis, then 
United States Senator. We walked down Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue. Many negroes bowed to Mr. Davis 
and he returned the bow. He was a very polite man. 
I finally said to him that I thought he must have a 
great many friends among the negroes. He replied: 
"I cannot allow any negro to outdo 'me in courtesy." 

But indeed there must have been something back 
of this formal courtesy which the negroes' deeply 
sympathetic natures had discovered, felt sure of, 
and appreciated, and to which their spontaneous 
testimonials bear witness on his death that came 
about in this way. 

During a visit to his plantation at Brierfield in 
the last of November, 1889, he was exposed to a 
cold rain that brought on an acute attack of bron- 
chitis. He started at once for home, but on arrival 
at New Orleans was so ill he was taken from the 
steamboat in an ambulance to the home of Mr. 
Justice C. E. Fenner. 

In the afternoon of December 6 he was stricken 
with a congestive chill and began to sink rapidly. 
On Mrs. Davis urging him to take some medicine 
that his devoted surgeon Dr. Chaille, had prescribed, 
with that ever courtesy and gentleness that marked 
I Ihis speech he whispered, "Pray excuse me? I cannot 
take it," and the eyes that had met his fellow man 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 273 

with respect and courage closed, and about midnight 
he died. 

Meanwhile, a gray mist had drifted in from the 
Gulf, which from the veranda at Beauvoir he had 
gazed on so often, enjoying its murmur, and in deep 
and heavy drops from live oaks and late-blooming 
roses it dripped, dripped through the remaining 
night hours like tears. 

Upon the announcement of his death, hands all 
over the South, associations of veterans, orphans in 
asylums, school children, students in colleges, began 
to weave chaplets for his bier; among them were 
those of his surviving slaves at Brierfield; and we 
think that not a wreath that was woven or eulogy 
deRvered bore such testimony to the kind of man 
he was; he had been their friend, he had shared the 
joys and the griefs of their youth; and as the memories 
and the friendships of those bygone days came 
back, their affection wove them into the wreath. 
The letter they wrote has already been given, but 
we think it will bear repeating: "We, the old servants 
and tenants of our beloved master. Honorable 
Jefferson Davis, have cause to mingle our tears 
over his death, who was always so kind and thought- 
ful of our peace and happiness. We extend to you 
our humble sympathy. Respectfully, your old 
tenants and servaiits.'^ Signed by a dozen or more. 

Thornton Montgomery, then a man of means, 
a son of Joseph E. Davis' body servant, Ben Mont- 



274 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

gomery, wrote to Mrs. Davis the day after her 
husband's death, as follows, from North Dakota, 
addressing her in the old plantation style: 

''Miss Varina: I have watched with deep interest 
and solicitude, the illness of Mr. Davis at Brierfield, 
his trip down on the steamer Leathers, and your 
meeting and returning with him to the residence 
of Dr. Payne in New Orleans; and I had hoped that 
with his great will power to sustain him, he would 
recover. But, alas for human endeavor! an over- 
ruling Providence has willed it otherwise. I appre- 
ciate your great loss, and my heart goes out to you 
in this hour of your deepest affliction. 

Would that I could help you bear the burden 
that is yours today. Since I am powerless to do so, 
I beg you to accept our tenderest sympathy. 
Your very obedient servant, 

Thornton." 

James H. Jones sent the following despatch to 
the mayor of New Orleans: 

'^ Raleigh, North Carolina 
As the old body servant of the late Jefferson Davis, 
my great desire was to be the driver of the remains 
of my old master to their last resting place. Return- 
ing too late to join the State Delegation from this 
city, I am deprived of the opportunity of showing 
my lasting appreciation of my best friend. 

James H. Jones." 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 275 

After funeral services in a church — nine governors 
of Southern States were present, the battle flag of 
the First Mississippi Rifles that Davis commanded 
in the Mexican War was on the right of the altar — 
conducted by clergymen of various denominations, 
Father Hubard, S. J., making the closing prayer, 
the body clothed in Confederate gray, was taken 
to the City Hall and there lay in state under the 
guard, day and night, of veteran soldiers. On the 
coffin was a silk Confederate flag and the sabre he 
had worn in Mexico. It was estimated that over 
fifty thousand people passed through the hall, the 
eyes of many swimming in tears. 

In the afternoon the coffin, surmounted by a 
catafalque, its dome festooned with blended State 
flags, was placed on a caisson and drawn by six 
black horses, set out for Metarie graveyard, escorted 
by veterans of the famous Washington Artillery of 
New Orleans and foUowed by a long procession. 
Befls began to toll and minute guns to fire. At the 
grave a choir sang ''I heard a voice from Heaven;" 
then, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust"; and the 
sun was going down as the service ended. 

On the day of his funeral all over the South 
minute guns were fired and bells were tofled. Special 
services were held in Lexington, Virginia, where Lee 
and Stonewall Jackson lay buried, and in St. Paul's, 
Richmond, where Davis had worshipped. All the 
leading newspapers of the North devoted editorial, 



276 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

obituary columns and many, like the Springfield 
Republican and the New York Sun, paid feeling and 
high tributes. 

In 1893, the body was taken to Richmond, back 
to the Capitol of the Confederacy; the train bearing 
it stopped on its way at his home at Beauvoir, where 
the little children of the neighborhood had covered 
the railroad track and the platform at the station 
with white flowers. On the train's arrival at Mont- 
gomery, the body was taken to the Capitol escorted 
by veterans, the streets thronged and bedecked. 
Over the right hand of the entrance to the Capitol 
was "Monterey"; over the left, "Buena Vista," 
and in an arch between them, in evergreen, was 
"He suffered for us." 

As the train proceeded on its way to Richmond 
masses of people met it at every station, children 
offering magnolia and yellow jessamine to the 
guards. Through the night as the train approached 
lonely stations in the primeval woods, bonfires 
greeted it, lit by dwellers of the wilderness, some of 
whom had ridden over fifty miles to pay their 
respects. 

At Danville a vast crowd had gathered in the 
depot and as the train came to a stop, they sang 
"Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to Thee." On 
its arrival in Richmond, the coffin was taken to 
the Capitol and placed facing Houdin's statue of 
Washington; thence by a mighty procession, to 



HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 277 

where it lies in Hollywood on the banks of the James. 
Reader, here we must part. I have enjoyed your 
company; I have tried to be fair with you, for I 
wanted you to be fair with him; here is my hand, 
and farewell. 



I 7- J^^ t^'^i -Urili. 
V ^ 






IVl' 















LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 707 285 3 « 



